


Third Shift

by lemonistas



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: M/M, future fic except it's now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-29 13:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19400854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonistas/pseuds/lemonistas
Summary: Ten years from now, Joe is hosting FOX's 12:30 a.m. post-Conan late-night show and Nick leads the house band, because if being the house band is good enough for The Roots then it's good enough for Nick Jonas and the Cabinet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Importing old fic from LJ - originally published 5/1/2010. If you got here by Googling yourself, hit the back button NOW.

Joe wanted to name the band "Nick Jonas and the Purity Rings," but Nick just twirled a drumstick menacingly and asked him how he was planning to launch his comedy career from six feet under, so they're "Nick Jonas and the Cabinet" and they're actually pretty good.

Nick hadn't planned on this; he'd planned on spending his twenties convincing everyone in the world who wasn't related to him that he was the legitimate heir to Bruce Springsteen's musical legacy. But then Kevin got married and someone from TMZ spotted Joe smoking up with the girls from the Veronicas and even Nick himself recognizes that _Who I Am_ is no _Born in the USA_ , and then Joe moved out and did that interview with _NME_ while he was drunk on whiskey and first-time freedom, and, well.

If he'd been smarter, Nick would have denounced Joe and his whining about his parentally imposed cultural illiteracy and gone on, like, a church tour with Rick Warren or something for the sake of his musical career and squeaky-clean image. But Nick was eighteen at the time and chafing more than he'd ever admit, forgetting the music and the money and wondering only if he was doomed to spend another four years of his life wearing his personal life on his hands and inadvertently helping teenage girls find their G-spots.

He can be monumentally stupid sometimes, he knows, which is why he moved in with Joe and never looked back.

Okay, so maybe he looks back a little. Being the next Springsteen would have been amazing. But Nick's not really from New Jersey, anyway, and then Joe does that YouTube video with Andy Samberg and everything just blows up. Which is why Nick's in New York, darting around the News Corp building and stealing all Kevin's scarves in the winter and trying not to burst with pride every time Joe absolutely nails his opening monologue (which is basically every night, Nick thinks).

His band is great, real professionals who only started bringing up Miley Cyrus after Joe made "Seven Things I Hate About Nick Jonas" into a nationally-televised running gag on par with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. It'll never beat the time that Joe invited Taylor to be his musical guest and cut the electricity twenty-seven seconds into her set, but it's still pretty fucking funny.

*

Nick is draped over the small couch in Joe's office, plucking out the opening bars of "Saturday Night Special" on his acoustic while Joe slumps at his desk, feet up, working on a list of questions for Kristen Bell.

"I have to ask about her kids," Joe's saying. "But she's Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars, like, doesn't have kids."

"She was Veronica Mars fifteen years ago, dude," Nick yawns. He babysat for Kev and Danielle last night, which means that he jacked his nephews up on sugar and then drove back from Bergen County at three in the morning. The darkness under his eyes is heavy and he feels unfocused, blurring around the edges. "She's a grown-ass lady now."

Joe is wearing sharply creased pants and a perfectly ironed button-down and the smug look of one who was in bed by eleven the night before. " _You're_ a grown-ass lady," he says, no heat behind it. "What are you planning for her entrance?"

Nick's hands still for a moment before shifting up into "We Used to Be Friends," right palm smacking the body of his guitar on each percussive downbeat.

Joe shakes his head. "And somehow, _I'm_ the one stuck on V-Mars." He gets up and stretches, gray trousers riding low on his hips beneath the checkered fabric of his shirt, and Nick loses only a few notes when he reminds himself not to stare at his brother's tanned flesh for the millionth time in the course of his twenty-seven years.

*

Nick Jonas was going to be a Serious Musician, and then he was going to be a Serious Politician, and then he was going to be President. He was not going to be second-fiddle to one brother and babysitter to another and convenient source of beer for the youngest, now in his junior year at NYU and only occasionally recognized from his stint with the House of Mouse.

He sometimes thinks about how things would have gone if he'd pushed on with the music he was playing back then, what it would have been like to go on tour as The Remaining Jonas Brother and sing songs about meeting girls at pizza shops while Kevin started a family and Joe started a riot. He closes his eyes and sees half-filled venues, feels the weight of his ring as he pounds out a solo version of "Tonight" to a disinterested crowd. He sees himself retreat into a prefabricated life constructed for him, praying and not meaning it, becoming his parents' favorite and trading shielded glances with Joe at the holidays. He sees the flat plains of Dallas outside his window as he holes up in the family compound, phone gone silent and guitar even more so.

And then he comes back to himself and looks around their studio, intimate and shiny and littered with detritus from that night's first-act skit. He sees a studio audience of adults laughing with Joe as he tells a cleverly constructed joke about Sarah Palin's latest on-air gaffe -- the Fox News studios are several floors below them, a fact that Joe has turned into a fire-and-brimstone bit with a papier-mache Satan climbing up the side of the building and shoving his head through the fake-skyline backdrop -- and watches the crazed route Joe takes as he runs in mock terror from the MurdochMoloch puppet. Nick opens his arms for Joe and holds him in an exaggerated grip for the cameras, patting him on the back as Joe pretends to wail in fear.

"You see, children," Nick says to the camera, "being a teen idol is an admirable career goal. Someday you, too, can come on at 12:30 in the morning and run away from shoddy production values."

MurdochMoloch's left horn falls off, on-cue.

Joe jumps up, smoothing the lapels of Nick's blazer before shouting, "We'll be right back!" Behind him, the band launches into "Devil's Haircut" for the commercial-break fade as Joe strides back over to his desk, giving Nick a thumbs-up before taking a few quick questions from the audience.

Nick might love music, but he can't breathe without his brother.

*

Nick really likes Conan. He's good people, and he's the reason that Joe's got the best job he'll ever have. His studio's just across the hall from theirs, but their schedules never match up, so he still takes Joe and Nick and sometimes Kevin out to lunch once a month to catch up. He checks in on their show and their lives and goes out of his way to reassure them that they deserve everything they have, which is especially helpful after Joe runs into Jimmy Kimmel backstage at Sarah Silverman's latest stand-up gig and gets an earful about pussy-ass Disney stars taking up space that should be occupied by real comedians.

"He's just pissed off that she dumped him again," Nick says to Joe when they get home that night. "And that he doesn't have enough pull to get Adam Carolla anywhere these days."

Joe doesn't respond, so Nick fixes him a 7-and-7 and sinks down next to him, overstuffed couch enveloping them both and shoulders touching. Joe takes his drink wordlessly and taps out a formless rhythm on Nick's thigh.

"He's not even _funny_ ," Nick says petulantly. "I can't even begin to talk about how much better you are."

This isn't strictly true, Nick knows. He could easily talk about how _good_ Joe is at this, all charm and physical humor and an easy manner that makes his guests pester their publicists to book return engagements as soon as they step off the stage. All the frenetic energy that Nick used to see at their concerts is controlled, now; Joe channels it into creating increasingly demented skits for the show, like the week he spent detonating watermelons in the middle of Rockefeller Center in hopes that Keith Olbermann will come out and tell him to get off his lawn, or his bid to find someone peeing in the corner of every subway station and ask them what they have against toilets.

No, Nick can tell Joe how good he is at this. What Nick can't tell Joe is how it astounds him. How every night, he watches his brother take a bow and thank his audience before heading back to his office and working on a few more jokes before he and Nick get dinner. He can't tell Joe how well this job fits him, how Nick watched his first week of shows from stage left and saw all the tension Joe'd been carrying around for years just flow right out of him. He can't tell him about how good he looks in the classic suits he wears each night, and he really can't tell him how he'd do anything Joe asked him to. He can't tell Joe about how much he loves the life they share, finally staying in one place and settling into a routine they can comfortably call home.

That's what Nick feels. But he can't tell Joe, so instead, he drops an arm around Joe's shoulders and rubs lightly at the exposed skin between his neck and the seam of his t-shirt. Joe sighs and relaxes into Nick's touch, turning to slump against his brother; Nick stretches out on the couch and eases Joe down next to him, Joe's back fitted against Nick's chest and their feet knocking together.

"Thanks, Nicky," Joe says, setting his drink on the coffee table, and Nick traces a line up Joe's arm in response, fingers ghosting across smooth skin and until Joe's breathing turns slow and even.

*

They've always been physically close, but Nick knows everyone expected them to grow out of it, to turn away from each other and towards their Disney-approved girlfriends. That was the plan, anyway, but by this point, Nick knows he sucks at sticking to plans that aren't his.

They share a huge apartment, tandem bedrooms with a connecting door, and they still fall asleep in each other's beds -- they write a lot of Joe's jokes together, and Nick's still doing lyrics for artists they know, and it didn't really make sense to screw with a formula that's worked for so long.

They're men now -- Joe's always cracking about how he's on the wrong side of thirty these days -- but Nick still takes Joe's hand when he wants, and Joe still presses into Nick in airplane seats, snuffling softly as Nick flips through _The Economist_ on their way to wherever.

Somehow, the people in their lives instinctively know not to challenge this. Nick has changed, and Joe has changed, but Nick & Joe as a unit never have. And they never will, if Nick can help it.

*

Neko Case is one of Joe’s musical guests that week, and Nick’s half-psyched and half-scared that she’ll realize that he basically ripped off The Electric Version for the show’s theme song.

In the beginning, Nick wasn’t going to get involved. The show was Joe’s thing, the first thing that would be his and his alone, and Nick was prepared to remove himself from the place he’d occupied at Joe’s hip for the better part of the last decade. But Joe had other ideas.

“Have you thought about what your gimmick’s going to be?” Joe had asked one day as they stepped out of the subway at Lexington and into a nearby coffee shop. Nick was preoccupied, as usual, thinking about how they’d had to make their way around New York in limousines with tinted windows for most of their lives. How easy it had been to trade superstardom for something resembling normalcy, once he’d put his mind to it.

Joe never thought about this kind of thing, Nick was pretty sure. After his six-month Sid Vicious freakout, after Nick packed his bags and moved to New York, Joe seemed content to leave his past behind and float towards the future. Nick was the one who remembered a time when they couldn’t walk into Starbucks without worrying about being pressed to death by a heaving mob of teenage girls, when their every move was documented by camera crews contracted by their parents, when they had to smile through everything without a break for actual emotion.

“Please don’t say you’re going to be like Paul Shaffer, though,” Joe was saying when Nick snapped out of it, the warm press of hot, black coffee and Joe’s hand at the small of his back. “He talks, like, the whole time Dave’s doing his monologue, and it’s so fucking annoying.”

Nick had blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It would be great if we could put you up there like you’re some huge kinky pervert, but Max Weinberg’s already doing that across the hall,” Joe said thoughtfully, finding an unoccupied table. “And the Roots are, you know, the Roots.”

At that moment, Nick realized that Joe had laid out the next ten years of his life for him. And that he was perfectly fine with it.

“Why don’t I just sit in the corner and point out how batshit insane you are most of the time?” Nick had said, grinning. “It won’t really require a whole lot of effort.”

*

So it’s six years later and he’s sitting behind Neko on stage, psyched as hell that she asked him to play the drums for her song tonight, when he sees Joe and his breath catches in his throat.

Joe usually stands off to the side during the musical acts, leaning back against Nick’s podium and gauging his brother’s reaction to the talent they’re showcasing. Nick is how Joe knew that Polly Paulusma was for real and that Ben Gibbard’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. When Sleater-Kinney hit the show on their reunion tour, Joe had needed to physically restrain Nick from slobbering all over Carrie Brownstein during “Entertain,” had grasped Nick’s hand to stop the trembling as she screamed about truth and fuck you and black-and-blue.

But Nick is performing this evening, trading his pinstriped bandleader suit for ripped jeans and a thousand-year-old Cheap Trick t-shirt, and Joe is standing just offstage instead.

He and Joe look at each other all the time, even when they know they’re not supposed to. They trade glances in business meetings and stare each other down over softball games. Nick knows the slightly awkward shape of Joe’s profile better than his own, sharp nose and rounded jaw coming into focus whenever he thinks about his brother. He knows the stages of Joe’s stubble, can tell the difference between a six o’clock shave and an eight o’clock one. They crack about their faces on the show all the time, Joe promising to take acid and go to rehab if they can get Ryan Reynolds and Zach Quinto to play them in the made-for-TV movie.

He knows that Joe looks at him, too, but Nick’s never felt so… appraised, he guesses, but that’s not it. Joe is looking at him like Nick is an unfinished jigsaw puzzle and he’s just found the piece that Frankie kicked under the couch years ago.

He tears his eyes away just before the house lights go down and Neko starts singing.

*

They’re at Blarney Rock that night, watching the Yankees get massacred at Fenway Park, when Joe brings it up.

“Why don’t you play anymore?” he says, palms flat on the table and never taking his eyes off the television.

“I play every night, dude,” Nick replies, dodging the question less-than-artfully.

“You know what I mean. Like, with a band. Where the music’s the only focus.” Joe stops, takes a deep breath. “It’s all you ever wanted to do, and you just look so _happy_ when you’re doing it.”

“I’m happy, Joe.” Nick pushes their drinks aside and tugs at Joe’s wrists, pulling his gaze away from the game. “Look at me, okay? I’m happy.”

Joe obeys, big brown eyes sweeping over Nick’s face, and Nick makes the stupidest face he can think of.

Nick did feel awesome out there, smashing his way through Neko’s record and letting the sweat roll down his back, felt his shirt clinging to him with the effort of rocking as hard as he possibly could. He’d felt a tug when he’d bumped fists with the rest of the band and thought about how this used to be his life, leaving everything on stage and falling into bed, exhausted, muttering his good-nights to Joe into his pillow. Nick had hugged Neko and grabbed the mike – “Neko Case, everybody, her new record comes out next Tuesday; thank you to Jason Segel and Emily Deschanel for stopping by; I’m NickJonasformybrotherJoegoodnightandwe’l

lseeyoutomorrow!” – and raised both arms to wave to the audience.

It was then that Joe had taken the opportunity to come back on-stage and work his arm around Nick’s waist, pulling him in tight, hips jammed close and Joe blowing kisses to the crowd.

Nick grins wide now, big special smile that only his brother gets to see. “Happiest ever,” he says, and he really means it.

*

A few years ago, Joe had gone camping in Nova Scotia with Zac Efron for the weekend.

Nick had been eating cereal and watching Meet the Press when Joe returned, waltzing through the door and dropping his pack and announcing, “I think I like dudes.”

Nick spat Cheerios all over poor David Gregory.

Joe had frowned. “Was that really necessary?”

Nick had swallowed. “No, not really.”

Joe had flopped down in the armchair across from Nick, cargo shorts drooping over his kneecaps, and sighed. “I’m serious, you know.”

Of course Joe was serious; Nick’s seen Zac Efron, after all. He has eyes. “Please tell me you were careful.”

“Well, I got a pretty nasty splinter – “ Nick almost lost his cereal again – “but beyond that… what do you think I am, Nicky J? An idiot?”

Nick had ignored the hurt in Joe’s voice, barreling through and asking what needs to be asked. “Are you going to tell Kevin?”

“Duh.”

“Mom and Dad?”

Joe chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I think I’ll wait until Danielle has her next kid, when they’re all high on baby powder.”

Truthfully, Nick had been surprised that Joe told their parents at all. Nick still called – still calls – home twice a week, patiently explaining that he and Joe were fine and he’d drop by the next time he was at Kevin’s. Nick still keeps up the pretense of a close relationship with his parents, neither of whom can stay up until 12:30 anymore, neither of whom approve of he and Joe making it into their thirties unmarried and scruffy and thoroughly entangled with each other.

Joe talks to their parents when he has to, at holidays and on special occasions, and he always makes sure he has one of their nephews in his arms when he does it – preferably baby Noah, since he’s usually wearing a disarmingly cute hat.

Nick remembers his mother crying and his father looking stern and lots of questions about whether or not, like, those sneaky Disney executives had ever touched Joe in his bathing suit area or something. Joe had handed Noah – natch – to Nick and promptly burst into laughter, covering his face with both hands and snorting through his fingers.

“Mom wants me to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against Aladdin,” he’d said to Nick, who immediately began snickering.

“Prince Eric was way creepier,” he’d replied, and Joe had broken up again; Noah started giggling, too, and their mother finally sighed and said they’d talk about this later.

Later never came, thank God.

*

Six months after that, Nick had grown a hideous Grizzly Adams beard and went out one night with the intention of getting thoroughly plastered. He woke up the next morning next to someone whose name might have been Kenneth.

He went home, passed an incredulous Joe in the hallway, shaved off the beard, and came back to the kitchen.

“I think I like dudes, too,” he’d said, and Joe had clapped him on the back.

“Take that, everyone who thought Kevin was the gay Jonas.”

Nick had rolled his eyes. “I’m very much not kidding.”

Joe had smiled and wrapped his brother in a hug, ruffling his curls and breathing softly into his ear. “Man, Mom and Dad are going to murder me.”

“Probably,” Nick had breathed back, and they’d stayed like that for a long time, holding each other in their boxers in the kitchen, bagels in the toaster and their hands in each other’s hair.

*

“I used to be cool,” Joe says while filming the next day, waving off the enthusiastic hoots of the audience. He’s wearing his glasses on-screen for a change. “No, really. Nicky can confirm this, right, Nicky?”

Nick gives the camera an exaggerated nod. “He was the pretty one.”

“And you were the jailbait,” Joe fires back. They don’t rehearse this part of the show, but it never seems to matter – they’ve kept up this rhythmic pitter-patter since the day Nick learned how to speak. “Women would tell him – I see you out there, ladies! – that they’d go to jail for the chance to hit that. Why they’d go to jail for him in the face of the fabulousness that is,” he gestures to himself, “I don’t know.”

Nick does his best to look solemn. “The internet may have exploded on my eighteenth birthday.”

“You liar. It was just Twitter.” Joe turns back to the audience, spotlights bright on the shoulders of his grey suit jacket. “But somehow, over the years, I got less cool, and I dragged Nick here along with me. We used to be on the front pages all the time, looking awesome in, like, scarves. So let’s take a look at some of _today’s_ gossip headlines, shall we?”

The camera is on Joe alone now, so Nick takes the opportunity to glance at Kevin off-stage. Kev tries to swing by whenever he can, which is less than he’d like – but Danielle really only entrusts the kids to family, so Kevin’s main babysitters are generally filming the very show Kevin needs to get a babysitter to visit.

Kevin rolls his eyes, and Nick laughs.

“So it says here that Elle Fanning was spotted coming out of Marquee on Tuesday with a strange man on her arm! Would you look at that, a strange man on her arm…” Joe holds up his tablet computer to the camera, showing off an obvious Photoshop hack job of the Cabinet’s bassist. “Will, you got something to tell us?”

Will fake-pouts as Jake plays the sad trombone.

“Okay, we’ll leave Will alone on this one. Now, it looks like Ali Lohan’s in some trouble – she was spotted on the bar at Pacha, dancing _without her underwear_.” The audience _oooohs_. “Now, I’m sure it was perfectly innocent, and she was just trying to help out Farmer Ted on the night of the big dance.”

Nick picks out a few bars of “If You Were Here” as the laughs ring through the studio.

“But that’s kid stuff, you know?” Joe continues, tapping at the tablet. “You’ve gotta leave the heavy lifting to the big boys.” He clears his throat. “Which is why the New York Post is reporting the following story: ‘Joe Jonas and brother Nick were spotted leaving the Park Avenue Barnes & Noble carrying three boxed sets of the _Lemony Snicket_ books.’ Now _that’s_ how you do paparazzi antics, my babies.”

Nick tunes his guitar down a half-step for a bit of “Rebel Yell.” Whatever. Their nephews aren’t big on sharing.

*

Nick plays rhythm guitar for Rhett Miller’s show at the Bowery that night, so he and Joe stumble home around 1 a.m., Nick high from singing backup on “Personal Jesus” and Joe high from three or four whiskey sours, sleepy and giggling like the teenaged stoners they never had the chance to be.

Kevin drops them off in front of their building – Kevin, with his beautiful family and stable career as a producer and his eminently sensible Volvo – and reminds them that they’re probably getting too old for this.

“Well, Joe is,” Kevin adds after a moment’s pause. “Nice job, Nicky.”

“Don’t call me Nicky,” Nick replies, grinning, Joe draped over him like a tacky drunk coat. “Thanks, dude. See you this weekend?”

They’re halfway up the stairs when Joe starts poking Nick in the side, hard enough to be annoying but not close enough to Nick’s OmniPod to make him nervous.

“You are a very talented little boy,” Joe snickers as Nick unlocks the door and pushes it open. “Is there any instrument you don’t play?”

“I’ve always left the tambourine up to you,” Nick offers, steering his brother towards his bedroom.

Joe sticks his tongue out as he kicks off his shoes, still poking Nick between the ribs. “I don’t want to play tambourine anymore. I want to play the Nickophone.”

Nick sighs and points towards the bed. “You haven’t touched a tambourine in ten years. And the Nickophone’s not real.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” Nick says gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Joe is sprawled out, long limbs splayed in all directions, glasses crooked on his face. He’s wearing dark jeans and a polo shirt and Nick has to suppress the urge to smooth his collar for him. “You made up the Nickophone for the show. Which you need to be up for and rehearsing in about seven hours.”

Joe groans. “Come here.”

“Okay,” Nick says, toeing off his own sneakers and gently shoving Joe towards the edge of the bed to make more room. Thank God they’d had the foresight to get California kings.

The rest of the family – okay, and the rest of the world, at least the people who still care about what they’re doing – would freak out if they knew about this, but Nick’s not in the business of caring about that anymore. They’re adults, capable of making their own decisions, and if those decisions involve sharing a bed and talking each other to sleep, well – it’s not like they’re hurting anybody.

“Other than that one lady down the hall who thinks she’s secretly engaged to me,” Joe says sleepily, and Nick realizes too late that he said the last part out loud. “But there’s a suspicious pigeon formation on the ledge across from us, so she’s got bigger things to worry about right now.”

“Sorry.” Nick blushes, even though he’s facing away from Joe. “You know what I mean.”

“No one ever got us before. Don’t expect them to get us now,” Joe replies softly, tucking his head between Nick’s shoulder blades. “I’m sleeping now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Night, Nick.”

“Night, Joe.”

The alarm clock lights grow dimmer as they drift off, and Nick only has to threaten to murder Joe twice before Joe stops poking him and muttering about the Nickophone’s potential to be the next big thing in rock opera.

They sleep.

*

Nick wants to take the boys to the Museum of Natural History, while Joe thinks they should be going to the giant Build-A-Bear in Times Square. After debating the merits of dinosaurs and teddy bears, Caleb and Mark prepare to leave with Nick, while Joe has Jacob practice putting Noah in his stroller.

"Don't drop the little dude," Joe warns him as he places Noah gently in his arms.

Jacob rolls his eyes. "I'm _nine_. And he's my _third_ little brother."

"Yeah, and as soon as we stop reminding you, you'll start dropping him," Nick says, buttoning Caleb's jacket. "Do you know how many times your dad dropped Frankie?"

"You dropped him more," Joe points out.

"He'd had more practice." Nick catches Mark's eye and points to his untied shoelace before turning back to Joe. "Did you ever drop me?"

"Once or twice," Joe says airily, high-fiving Jacob after he buckles Noah into the stroller properly. "So who's ready to build some bears?"

Jacob jumps around a bit before executing a perfect cartwheel in their living room. Noah squeals and claps happily. As the mature role model of the group, Joe holds his hands like claws and runs around the room, roaring about honey.

"I thought Uncle Joe liked pandas," Caleb says, furrowing his little brow. Caleb is seven years old, small and serious, and Kevin has joked that he's actually Nick's kid on more than one occasion.

Nick ruffles his miniature's hair. "Uncle Joe's into all kinds of bears," he says without thinking.

Joe has to collapse on the couch and hide his face in a throw pillow until the hysterics subside.

*

They meet up with Kevin and Danielle at a restaurant in Midtown that evening, and Noah starts flailing with excitement as soon as he hears his mother’s voice.

“We were apart for eight hours, babe,” she laughs, scooping up her youngest son and settling back into her seat. “You’re going to have to get used to it eventually.”

Noah pouts. It is, Nick thinks, a truly epic pout.

“Okay.” Danielle gives him an Eskimo kiss. “I missed you, too.”

“Did you guys have a good time today?” Kevin asks as Mark crawls over him, claiming the space between his parents. “You didn’t have to fight any crime, right?”

Caleb shakes his head, taking Nick by the hand and tugging him down into the booth. “No crimefighting, Daddy. We didn’t have any lasers.”

Joe looks up from the menu Jacob had grabbed on their way inside. “Hey, I resent that. You think your uncles can’t fight crime?”

“Not without lasers,” Mark says matter-of-factly. “Lasers are essential.”

Kevin raises an eyebrow. “Do you even know what that word means?”

Mark giggles and shakes his head no, burying his face in the crook of his father’s arm. “I saw a triceratops.”

“Awesome, baby,” Danielle says, tugging Noah’s little Dodgers beanie over the tops of his ears. “What was it like?”

Mark schools his five-year-old face into a thoughtful expression. “Pointy.”

“It looked like Uncle Joe’s hair,” Caleb blurts.

Nick can’t help the snort that escapes him.

“Nice, dude,” Joe says witheringly. “Jacob, man, you’re still on my side, right?”

Jacob nods; if Caleb is Nick’s, Jacob belongs to Joe, ever since Joe knocked the rest of the family out his way as he sprinted through the door to Danielle’s hospital room over nine years ago. “I think your hair’s cool.”

As his brother and nephew go into an elaborately choreographed high-five, Nick surveys their table. Noah is well on his way to dreamland, nestled in Danielle’s arms. Mark is tucked into the space at his father’s side, Kevin’s arm sloping around him and lightly grazing Danielle’s shoulder. He feels the warm weight of Caleb beside him, breathing in and out, and Nick can’t stop himself from wrapping his nephew into an unprovoked hug.

“You want to know something?” he whispers to Caleb, who nods. “We have the best family in the world. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”

“Okay,” Caleb whispers back, slipping his small hand into Nick’s.

*

Their headlining guest that Monday is a dude with a couple of baby tigers. Or maybe the baby tigers are the guests? Either way, Joe is holding one of them and _nuzzling_ it like he’s going to take it home and name it Cuddles.

“You can’t have it,” Nick yells from the safety of stage left.

Joe glares at him. “You’re going to upset her, okay? Cecilia is delicate.”

“Her name is actually Nagari,” the trainer interjects from his seat on the couch. The other tiger is sitting obediently on the cushion next to him, and Nick really wishes this guy hadn’t trained a couple of baby tigers to pretend they’re housecats. Like, Joe is three seconds away from nibbling on the cat’s ear or something equally terrifying.

“I want to call her Cecilia,” Joe says with finality. “I think she’s purring.”

The trainer looks like he wishes he’d booked himself onto _The View_ instead. “Tigers don’t actually purr.”

“Cecilia does,” Joe replies smugly.

Nick sighs and whips the band into the Pixies’ “Cecilia Ann” as the cameras roll to commercial.

*

“And that,” Joe says, pausing the DVR, “is when you harshed my squee.”

Nick rolls his eyes and tugs up the cuffs of his pajama bottoms. It’s weirdly cold tonight, both of them huddled underneath a Giants blanket in the living room. Joe’s got the hood of his sweatshirt up, tension cords hanging loosely around his neck, and Nick’s wearing a pair of socks with ice-skating penguins on them. “You’re not even speaking English.”

“I had a squee, and you harshed it.” Joe points to himself on-screen, the baby tiger’s paws wrapped securely around his shoulders. “It’s not like we don’t have the room.”

“I give up,” Nick groans, crashing into Joe’s shoulder. “Whatever. Go get a baby tiger. You can clean its litterbox and tenderize guinea pigs for its meals.”

“Excellent.” Joe tucks his arm around Nick, drawing him in close and re-starting the show.

Nick sees Joe perform every day, but he rarely sees him from the audience’s perspective. Joe is sharp and smooth behind his desk, starched white cuffs peeking out from beneath grey flannel sleeves, bursting with energy against the skyline backdrop. He smiles his way through his lines, and in the darkness of their cold apartment, his teeth seem impossibly white.

The Joe next to him on the couch is wearing a ratty UCLA sweatshirt and oversized sweatpants, with his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Nick sees the blue-black imprints below his eyes – Joe does get tired, after all – and the red flush of his cheeks, lifeblood pumping just below the surface.

Nick breathes in Joe’s slightly sweaty scent, antiperspirant and cologne and black coffee and a boy-king all grown up, and realizes that he’s probably in love with his brother.

Nick stifles a yawn. It’s not a very shocking realization.

Joe’s always been his everything; he’s the reason Nick could push himself so hard for so long, writing and recording and touring and running on nothing more than Diet Coke and imagination, without collapsing in on himself like a doomed nebula. Joe’s the one who rebelled and gave Nick the out he didn’t even know he needed. They live in each other’s pockets, rough edges fitting together and sealing out the rest of the world; a slow, comfortable affection years in the making.

He thinks that it would be weirder if he _weren’t_ in love with Joe by this point.

Nick curls in closer, wrapping his arms around his brother’s torso and sliding his hands into the kangaroo pocket of Joe’s sweatshirt. “Love you,” he mutters.

“Love you back,” he hears Joe reply.

*

Nick and Joe used to have an entire payroll of people whose entire job description was, “Keep the boys happy.” Now, they share a grumpy personal assistant called Louise who runs their lives with strangely laconic efficiency and absolutely no regard for what, exactly, they actually want.

Joe had asked for pad thai for lunch that day. Louise came back ten minutes later with a spinach salad and a can of Korean-branded Coca-Cola.

“This is great, Louise,” Joe tries, “but I wanted – “

“You need more leafy greens,” Louise snaps. “This is better.”

Joe pops open the lid of the salad without further comment.

“I brought my lunch, Louise,” Nick says, holding up a can of Chicken and Stars soup. “So I’m all set.”

“Lovely. Do you want a medal?” she retorts, stomping out of Joe’s office in time to conduct her daily terrorization of the writing staff. Nick closes the door when he hears her call Judah Friedlander a “goofy-ass chucklefucker.”

He sighs. “Remember when we could make girls faint?”

Joe swallows a gigantic bite of his unwanted salad. “I totally fear her. I think she was in the Israeli army or something.”

Nick gets up from the couch and perches on the edge of Joe’s desk. His brother’s got his glasses on again, black frames stark against his winter-pale skin. “You think everyone was in the Israeli army.”

“Dude, she knows krav maga.”

“They teach krav maga at the gym downstairs. It’s between Advanced Hip-Hop and Flow Yoga.”

“At least she got me a soda,” Joe says. “Even if it’s all Korean and stuff. Hey, do you think Louise knows Kim-Jong Il?”

Nick snorts, but stops when he sees the photo of himself and Joe with Rahm Emanuel in the Blue Room and remembers how effortlessly Louise got them into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few years ago.

“It’s a possibility,” he allows, drumming the tips of his fingers on the desk until Joe grabs his wrist, laughs, tells him to stop.

The warmth of Joe’s hand on his is a sensory jolt, and Nick thinks about how easy it would be to turn his hand over, touching palm to palm, and trap Joe where he is. How he’d use the confusion to throw his leg over Joe’s lap, run his free hand through his soft curls, lick his way into Joe’s mouth until Joe kissed him back. He could do it, he knows; he closes his eyes and sees himself popping open the buttons of Joe’s plaid shirt while those ridiculously hot glasses press patterns into the rounded flesh of his cheeks until he takes them off Joe’s face and looks straight into those dark eyes. He sees himself sucking a mark into Joe’s neck, knows just how the makeup girls will titter as they layer on the foundation, feels the hardness of Joe’s length as he sucks harder and grinds down. He can feel the half-moon crescents that Joe’s fingernails leave on his biceps, the frantic press of lips and tongue and teeth against his own, and –

“Nick.”

Joe is looking at him, one hand clutching a forkful of salad and the other encircling Nick’s wrist, his eyes full of concern and something unreadable.

It takes Nick a minute to snap out of it, and by then, Joe is asking about his levels, digging through his desk-drawer clutter to find the equipment he keeps there.

Nick opens his mouth to protest and lets out a breath he didn’t actually know he’d been holding. He decides to keeps quiet, allows Joe to check his levels, laughs it off and leaves the office to heat up his soup.

*

Joe takes three hours to get ready for the VMAs, leaving Nick alone in the kitchen with his laptop and not a whole lot to do.

“No one’s going to be looking at you,” he yells in the general direction of the bathroom. “You’re too old to be cool.”

“I don’t dress for other people, Nicholas,” Joe yells back. “I dress for my own artistic vision.”

“You dress so everyone spends the whole night looking at your crotch,” Nick grumbles, sipping Diet Coke through a straw. “You might want to think about getting some therapy for the fascination you have with your own dick.”

“Shut up,” Joe says affectionately, flipping off the bathroom light. Somehow, it took him three hours to put on tight black jeans, a red polo shirt, a white belt, and a pair of Sperry topsiders.

Nick blinks. “You can’t wear that.”

“Why not?”

Nick motions down to his own blue polo shirt, black jeans, white belt, and dock shoes. “Because we match, and there are drag queens on Fire Island who look less gay than we do like this?”

Joe shrugs. “I’m not changing.”

“Neither am I.”

There’s no arguing with either of them, both stomping resolutely down to the Town Car waiting outside – “for forty-five minutes, dude,” Nick reminds his brother – and climbing into the backseat, where Kevin is flipping through a copy of _Us Weekly._

“You guys look really gay,” he says as the car pulls away from the curb, wincing when both of them smack him on the back of the head. “Watch the hair!”

“We _are_ gay, Kev,” Nick reminds him. “Well, Joe’s pansexual and I’m... somewhat afraid of women, I think.”

Joe shakes his head. “It’s all Miley’s fault. She crazied up your ass and ruined you for the rest of the ladies. And now you’ll never know a woman’s touch because Hannah Montana scarred you for life.”

“I often dislike you very strongly, Joseph,” Nick says. They’re halfway on top of each other, Kevin’s legs kicked out over the middle of the seat and Nick’s back pressed against the window.

Joe wiggles his hand underneath Nick’s thigh and pinches him. “I love it when you get all prissy. It’s nice to know that I’m still the dude in this relationship.”

“It took you three hours to get ready!” Nick protests, while Kevin kicks at them both and tells them to stop acting like a pair of junior-varsity cheerleaders.

When they arrive at Radio City Music Hall, the red carpet is jammed with reporters and photographers looking for stars ten years younger than they are, but a few of the gossip sites spot the Jonas brothers – not to be confused with the Jonas Brothers – and ask for some words and pictures. Kevin talks about the single he’s producing with Stef Germanotta, Nick does his part to promote Neko’s new album, and Joe spends the entire time with his arms wrapped around Nick’s shoulders, exaggerated smacky kisses on the cheek every time Nick starts to answer a question with any degree of sincerity.

“When he’s not molesting me, Joe hosts _Third Shift With Joe Jonas_ on FOX, weeknights at twelve-thirty a.m. Eastern, and am I seriously promoting your show for you?” he asks, turning away from the _Access Hollywood_ camera crew and sizing up his brother.

Joe nips at his nose like an overeager puppy. “It’s your show, too.”

*

Joe's still tight with Andy, so some Saturday nights, they make the epic trek across Rockefeller Center to the SNL afterparty in the Rainbow Room. Nick knows that this room has seen enough cocaine usage to fund its very own Colombian cartel, so he mostly hangs out in the corner and talks orchestral arrangements with Tina Fey's husband. Frankie shows up sometimes because of his truly epic crush on Tavi Gevinson, who's apprenticing in Wardrobe; he wears a bowler hat and ignores the disapproving looks Nick shoots him when he sneaks outside to smoke. And even though he's not even on the show -- even though he's not even on the _network_ \-- Joe somehow ends up running the party.

"EVERYBODY AT THIS PARTY IS A JEDI," he booms, poking Louise with a lightsaber and only wincing a little bit when she turns from her conversation with Emily Blunt and snaps it in half. "OKAY, EVERYBODY AT THIS PARTY IS A JEDI EXCEPT FOR THAT LADY."

Aziz Ansari groans. "Dude, that was in MY office."

"I'll buy you a new one," Joe promises, and Nick makes a mental note to stop by Toys 'R Us the next day. Joe will never remember. "It's all for a good cause. BECAUSE EVERYBODY AT THIS PARTY -- "

" -- is a Jedi, we know," Nick finishes, stepping in and plucking Joe's shot glass out of his hand. "Dude, please stop destroying property at a rival network. Lorne Michaels calls up and yells at someone in Finance and then it makes its way over to News and then Bill O'Reilly calls us idiots on the air and then Grandma calls me about it and it sucks."

"That was a run-on sentence, Nicholas, which means that you've had a lot to drink," Joe replies, laughing, and it's kind of true; every time Nick steps in to take a drink away from one of his ridiculous brothers, he ends up downing it himself. This goes a long way towards ensuring that he becomes one of the ridiculous brothers, so really, it's not a great system. He should probably work on that. And he will, at a later date, perhaps when Joe isn't pressed up against him and stealing his shot back.

The problem, Nick thinks, is that somewhere along the line, Joe became the kind of person who has explosive sexual chemistry with everyone and everything around him, up to and including furniture. He flirts with everyone he meets, from a fresh-out-of-rehab Falcon Heene to a fresh-out-of-rehab Rue McClanahan, and everyone stopped thinking it was weird several years ago. He's been spotted making out with Neil Patrick Harris, Beth Ditto, Rivers Cuomo, and Kelly Clarkson, and that was just in the last _year_. (Nick privately thinks that this is because out of all the brothers, he and Joe were the ones who spent the greatest number of key developmental years riding around in a bus and doing interviews with _Tiger Beat_ instead of interacting with actual human beings. It's why he's content to hide out in his apartment and share a bed with his brother, and it's why Joe thinks that sticking his tongue in other people's mouths is an appropriate way to say hello. He's pretty close to getting his therapist to agree with him.)

"You get a weird little line here when you start thinking too hard," Joe's saying, touching the crease between Nick's eyebrows. "And that means that you haven't had nearly enough alcohol."

"Yeah, because getting a diabetic drunk isn't a recipe for disaster," Nick protests feebly, letting Joe drag him over to the bar.

Joe rolls his eyes signaling for two more vodka shots. "You're not Stacey McGill, Nicholas. And your levels were fine an hour ago, _and_ I fed you an enormous cheeseburger earlier. I know how to get you drunk by now. I'm the world's leading expert in the field, in fact."

"You're such a twelve-year-old girl," Nick mutters, palming the shots and passing one to Joe. "A very talented and masculine one, but a twelve-year-old girl nonetheless."

"Damn straight. Girls get the best accessories, which sucks for us," Joe says, like that's ever stopped him from wearing pink Swatches and riding bikes with pom-poms on the handlebars. "Drink up."

Nick downs his shot and tries not to jump out of his skin when he feels Joe's hand on his cheek, keeping his head tilted back. "Um, all gone?"

"You need this more than I do," Joe says quietly, and for about three seconds, Nick thinks that Joe's going to kiss him and they can finally get this thing started, but then Joe's holding his shot glass up to Nick's lips and urging him to open up again. "Let's try round two, okay?"

Nick takes the second shot, opening his throat and swallowing like a champion porn star, and when he wipes his mouth on Joe's shoulder, he lets himself stay there for a minute, just breathing in and out.

Joe smells like fabric softener and Diet Coke, and Nick thinks that this just got a lot harder.

*

Neither of them can find enough cash in their wallets for a cab, so they end up stumbling back to the News Corp building and begging a night watchman to let them into Joe’s office. Nick falls face-first onto the couch, so when Joe collapses on top of him, his yelping complaints are muffled by pillows.

“You’re so squishy,” Joe says, curling around Nick and tucking his hands into the creases of Nick’s bent elbows. “You’re like a body pillow, but better, since you’re an actual body. Which is the point. Oh, hey, I get it now.”

Joe’s never really managed to grasp the concept of “personal space,” particularly when it comes to Nick. This, Nick thinks, is why they’ll both end up alone in the end; Joe’s wildly inappropriate and Nick’s powerless to stop him, not even bothering with token protests anymore because the truth is that he likes it. He likes knowing that he’s the single most important thing in his brother’s world, so he lets Joe manhandle him like he’s still a fifteen-year-old kid in danger of getting lost on his way back from the tour bus. He allows Joe to envelop him in a cocoon so tight that no one will ever really find a way inside, and he can’t even be disgusted by his own codependency. He loves it all too much.

Nick kicks his feet idly, knocking against Joe’s. “We’re way too old for this,” he says, turning his head to the side.

“What do you mean?”

“Half those kids are going to stay up drinking all night, and then they’ll just have some Red Bull and keep going tomorrow. Whereas I feel like I’ve already started my hangover.”

“You can’t be hung over yet,” Joe says into Nick’s shoulder. “You’re still drunk.”

“Precisely.” Nick groans. “But I can see the hangover from here, dude. As soon as I fall asleep, this all goes away, and I get to spend tomorrow in bed with water and aspirin and you blaring Bon Jovi just to piss me off.”

“I promise not to play Bon Jovi.” Joe presses a dry kiss to the back of Nick’s neck, spirals of heat radiating from the point of contact. Christ, they’re both blitzed. “I’ll find something with the soothing sounds of the ocean. Or possibly a waterfall. Wait, that might just make you want to pee.”

“You could just be very quiet,” Nick suggests.

“That’s not actually an option.” Joe pauses. “I’m really sorry I got you drunk, Nicky.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, I’m a little sorry.”

“Okay, that’s more believable.” Nick shifts to his side, Joe sandwiched between him and the back of the couch. “But don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy.”

He feels Joe nod behind him, hair brushing his shoulders. “Damn straight you’re a big boy. You’re not really cut out to be the little spoon, here.”

“Shut up. I can be the little spoon if I want,” Nick scoffs. He’s always been the little spoon, ever since the four of them had been crammed into one bedroom in New Jersey, fitting himself against Joe’s chest long after he’d outstripped his older brother in height. Plus, if he were curled up behind Joe, there’d be no missing his growing hard-on, and that’s a conversation Nick’s already scheduled for the 32nd of Febtober.

“Okay.” Joe drops a kiss on Nick’s shoulder, right where the collar of his t-shirt is stretched and worn, and Nick suppresses a shiver. “You can be my little spoon.”

They fall asleep like that, draped over each other on Joe’s undersized office couch, and when Nick wakes up to Joe’s morning hardness nudging the small of his back, he can’t bring himself to think about how very not normal they are. It’s too exhausting, and Nick spent the better part of his adolescence being exhausted. He’s okay with just letting things be, no matter what the consequences are, and he stumbles over to the office coffeepot with a crooked half-smile and an unshakeable conviction that if he’s going down, at least Joe’s going down with him.

*

Three years after they’d finished their last tour, Joe got tired of misunderstanding all of Paul Scheer’s jokes and decided that he was going to go to college. He lasted a semester and a half at Evergreen State College before hauling ass back to New York, but he brought all the books from his Psychedelic Literature class back home with him.

“You could have just bought the books and saved us both a lot of time,” Nick had suggested at the time, watching Joe slot his books onto the shelf in painstaking alphabetical order. “And I bet you wouldn’t have gotten that weird rash.”

“You’re just mad that I did something without you,” Joe had said, matter-of-factly, and Nick had grumbled something about stupid arrogant brothers and their stupid arrogant hipster tribal tattoos before turning back to the Golf Channel. He didn’t really have an answer for that, because Nick had spent the last four months moping around Kevin’s basement recording studio, bothering the guys from Passion Pit and drinking too much black coffee.

Joe had thrown himself into his self-assigned reading list and began quoting Hunter S. Thompson with far too much regularity. He’d even tried to start up a gentleman’s correspondence with Jann Wenner, which was as hilariously unsuccessful as Nick expected it to be, and he started saying “mahalo” all the freaking time.

When Joe picked up a set of bongos off Craigslist, Nick began seriously contemplating killing him in his sleep, or at least moving in with Kevin and Danielle and colicky baby Caleb.

Joe eventually shaved off his Allen Ginsberg beard and stopped stinking up the apartment with strawberry incense, but his obsession with _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_ remains strong. So when Gus Van Sant shows up to promote the long-delayed film adaptation, Nick’s not really all that surprised to find Joe sitting in his office with his head on his desk, face-down on his laptop keyboard.

Nick walks behind the desk and braces himself on the back of Joe’s big leather swivel chair, peering at the computer screen. “Uh, I don’t really think that GGGGGGGGggghhhhhhhhhhhhj” is a great opening question.”

“You try interviewing one of the best directors of all time, Nicholas,” Joe replies, not moving. “And pretend they’re making a movie out of your favorite book of all time. And then pretend that it’s already getting Oscar buzz, and that you’re the only one who managed to book him before the release. You’ll be surprised by what starts to look good.”

“Unless you’re planning on vomiting all over him, this isn’t as good as you think it is.” Nick leans over and rests his chin on the edge of the chair, slowly turning the two of them from left to right. “You want me to get the writers?”

“Ugh, no,” Joe says, pulling himself up and away from his desk. The soft tufts of his hair tickle Nick’s chin as he sits back in the chair. “I need to do this myself. But you have to stay here and make sure I don’t just gush at him for ten minutes.”

Nick fell asleep halfway through _Last Days_ , so he doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. “What do you want me to play tonight? I was thinking Velvet Underground.”

Joe hums a few bars of something Nick thinks might be “Venus in Furs,” which he takes as agreement.

“Ask him about how he’s handling the Hell’s Angels component,” Nick suggests. “He’s doing the La Honda scene, right?”

Joe nods. “Yeah. They got Michael Chiklis and Jason Statham. Maybe… something about using them as a turning point in the film? Making the cultural outlaws into actual outlaws. The Angels got the cops too freaked out to approach Ken Kesey, and he wore a really stupid fedora.”

“Fedoras aren’t stupid, and I know the book. You made me read it,” Nick reminds him. “And then you made me read it again because you didn’t think I properly understood its majesty. Or something. I don’t know, dude. The Yankees were playing when you were yelling at me about it.”

Joe doesn’t reply, just opens a new Word document and starts tapping at the keyboard, awkward motions because no one ever taught him to type correctly, and this is how Joe manages to book guests who don’t ordinarily do late-night television: he immerses himself in whatever his guest’s craft is and runs with it, asking questions meant to engage and explore. He dorks out about everything – he gained fifteen pounds the week Paula Deen was on – and even when he’s stuck, he only needs that one thread before he’s back in the game.

He might be a great singer and a decent actor, but this is what Joe was born to do, Nick thinks – goofing off at the beginning of the show, learning from his guests in the middle, and analyzing the music at the end. He might have crow’s feet now, and Nick can see a few grey hairs creeping into the stubbornly punk-rock haircut, but this show makes Joe happier than he’s been since they first realized that the band had a real chance of playing something bigger than north Jersey VFW halls.

Nick loves music, and he loves performing, but he hates everything that goes along with it – the touring, the self-promotion, the constant scrutiny and the knowledge that there will always be people out there rooting for you to fail. He hates smiling when he’s told to and exploiting his own feelings for profit, because putting your emotions to music is one thing but being _expected_ to do it is another thing entirely. Sometime between thirteen and eighteen, he began to hate the spotlight, and that’s never really gone away; he’s happy over on stage left, safe behind his podium with a guitar strapped securely around him like armor, Joe keeping everyone’s attention long enough to let Nick just _be_.

The show’s the best thing that ever happened to Joe, sure, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to Nick, too.

“You’re so good at this,” he says, and Joe’s slow smile is reflected in the laptop screen.

“Couldn’t do it without you, man,” Joe replies, and Nick hugs him from behind before leaving him to his frantic typing.

Every day, he gets up and goes to work with his brother, his best friend, and – he thinks stupidly, nearly walking into one of the writers’ assistants and jamming his leg on the conference table – the one great fucking love of his life.

He can still hear Joe’s frenzied keystrokes as he walks out of the _Third Shift_ suite, and despite the bruise blooming low on his thigh, despite his lack of sleep, and despite the fact that he’s hopelessly in love with his own brother, Nick Jonas thinks he might be one of the luckiest men in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Joe’s babysitting for the kids while Kev and Dani make the rounds at Kardinal Offishall’s party one Friday night, so Nick has the apartment to himself. He thinks he might do some reading, clear out the DVR, maybe even finish the lyrics he’d started writing earlier that week.  
  
He gets halfway through the first chapter of _Manhood for Amateurs_ before throwing the book across the room, downing the glass of wine he’d poured, and grabbing a notebook from the desk in the corner.  
  
 _The Pros and Cons of Being In Love With Joe,_ he writes with a flourish, resisting the urge to add “by Nicholas Jonas, Age 27” underneath.  
  
“Cons first,” he says aloud, because Joe had eaten all the tortilla chips before leaving and Nick had really been looking forward to making nachos.  
  
 _Related (obviously)  
Has weird family (see #1)  
Makes out with everyone  
Incapable of having serious relationship with another party for longer than a weekend  
Allergic to running the dishwasher properly  
Eats food not belonging to him on semi-regular basis  
Poor speller  
Enjoys public displays of affection to an inappropriate degree  
Thinks Ban Ki-Moon is a type of Pokemon_  
  
Nick chews on his pen cap. It’s a fairly comprehensive list, he thinks, drawing a line beneath “Related” and tracing over the letters with thick strokes to give it the emphasis it probably deserves. Honestly, Nick’s not all that freaked out by the blood-relation thing anymore; the odds of any of them turning out normal were always slim, and Nick figures that holding steady jobs and avoiding rehab and remembering to call home twice weekly all definitely outweigh the dirtybadwrongness of wanting to fuck his brother on the karmic scale. He’s still going to heaven and everything – he’ll probably get a stern talking-to from St. Peter beforehand, but Nick’s been to Vatican City, and Peter’s got his own brother issues with which to contend.  
  
Plus, it’s not like Joe’s his sister and they have to worry about freaky little _Flowers In The Attic_ babies or anything.  
  
Nick shudders off the mental image and pours himself another glass of wine, writing “Pros” on the opposite side of the page.  
  
 _Is my favorite brother  
Am his favorite brother  
Disgustingly talented comedian  
Makes good waffles  
Harmonizes well_  
  
Nick refills his glass again.  
  
 _Knows how to give emergency insulin shots  
Impressively large and snuggly sweatshirt collection  
Excellent bone structure (product of genetics)  
Has already seen me throw up on a number of occasions  
Skin of neck seemingly constructed entirely for biting, licking, etc._  
  
Joe’s neck is his favorite. It’s corded with muscle and his Adam’s apple juts out appealingly, an irrevocable reminder of his masculinity in spite of overwhelming prettiness, and Nick had spent all of that afternoon’s rehearsal staring at it. Joe looks good in everything, but Nick particularly likes him in dark dress shirts and ties, all starched collars and stubble.  
  
He flicks open the top button of his jeans.  
  
Back when Nick liked girls, he gravitated towards skinny, knock-kneed brunettes with big eyes and soft skin. When he moved on to guys, he discovered broad shoulders and strong jawlines and the overwhelming feeling of being with someone who could pin you at a moment’s notice. Those are the figures that have always floated behind his eyelids when he jerks off, twisting and turning until he comes into his hand with a muffled groan. He’s never consciously decided to think about Joe, but – he thinks, running the heel of his hand over his groin – there’s a first time for everything.  
  
They’d kiss first, deep and heavy, because Nick likes kissing and Joe _loves_ kissing. He doesn’t know if he wants it to be frantic or sensual, so he settles on something in-between, pictures them pressed up against the door between their bedrooms, sees himself coax Joe’s mouth open with soft presses of his tongue. They’d start off with their hands in each other’s hair, kneading and pulling, before Nick pushes them over to the bed and Joe’s hands slide down his back, slipping inside the low waistband of Nick’s jeans.  
  
In his mind, he gets Joe on the bed and up against the pillows, straddling his hips and loosening his tie before lowering his mouth to Joe’s neck. The Joe in his imagination is pliant and smiling and breathing like he’s already been fucked out and put away to dry, so Nick sucks a bruise into his neck just to imagine he hears those soft exhalations up close. Joe’s eyes are heavy-lidded and half-shut; he’s got one hand in Nick’s hair and the other gripping his shoulder, dangerous encouragement.  
  
Nick’s hand tightens on his cock as he thinks about running his teeth over Joe’s Adam’s apple, biting along the edges and tonguing the shallow indentations he’d leave behind. Joe would be patient, would let Nick take as much as he wanted, gently rolling their hips together as Nick gets his fill of Joe’s neck. Nick would leave a necklace of bruises just above his collarbone, low enough to hide underneath Joe’s gaudy ties, kissing each before moving back up to Joe’s mouth.  
  
He thinks Joe’s probably a pretty good kisser, since he does it so much, and Nick jerks himself harder when he imagines Joe biting his bottom lip and canting their bodies upward, dicks pressing against each other through layers of denim and cotton. He sucks his own lip into his mouth as the Joe in his mind gets a hand down the back of his boxer-briefs, pulling them flush, and he briefly thinks that this imaginary version of his brother is a total cockslut before he gets both their zippers down and guides their cocks together, gasping and gritting his teeth when he imagines them lining up perfectly.  
  
He reaches up to press his palm against Joe’s full, red mouth, and is rewarded when Joe licks his hand and pushes it back downwards to jerk them off together. He gets his hand around both of them, flat of his thumb sliding into the crease where their flesh meets, lets Joe grab his hair with one hand and his ass with the other. Nick sees himself supported on one trembling elbow, Joe’s hands holding them together at all the important junctures, and they’re kissing again when Nick feels the familiar pressure at the base of his spine telling him he won’t last much longer.  
  
He comes with a guttural moan, thinking about Joe’s tongue sliding against his, and slumps back against the couch where they eat popcorn and watch re-runs all night.  
  
As Nick cleans up later, he realizes that’s exactly what he wants – hot, messy fucking followed by collapsing on the couch and cuddling together with snacks and sitcoms.  
  
He’s got to do something about the sex, but he’s already got the snacks and the sitcoms, and that’s the most important part.  
  
*  
  
After the Van Sant interview, _Third Shift_ becomes a weird sort of clearinghouse for the directors of Oscar bait to shill their wares. Nick finds himself eating lunch with Lee Daniels and accidentally assumes that Alan Ball is an electrician sent to fix the wonky lighting in the band’s practice space. He plays a White Stripes mashup when Michel Gondry takes the stage, listens to Paul Haggis rail against Scientology, and tries not to crack Dustin Lance Black over the head with his guitar when he catches him leaning into Joe a bit too closely.  
  
“You could have been nicer to Lance,” Joe says over takeout cheeseburgers in the writers’ room that evening. “He thought you were adorable.”  
  
“I am adorable,” Nick replies, trying not to wince when Louise throws a bottle of apple juice across the table at him. “My levels are fine, Louise.”  
  
“Drink it,” she says in a tone that brokers no argument. “Your idiot brother has a point. You’ve been a huge bitch all afternoon.”  
  
“I have not,” Nick says.  
  
“You kind of have.” Joe drags a French fry through a puddle of ketchup. “But I’m not an idiot.”  
  
“You kind of are,” Nick shoots back. He cracks open the safety seal on the bottle of juice and takes a long drink. “He didn’t just want to talk about casting decisions and, like, screenplay rights.”  
  
Joe fixes him with a long, hard look. “Are you saying that I don’t know enough to keep it professional?”  
  
“No,” Nick says, as Louise drawls, “Yes.”  
  
Nick glares at her. “You’re not helping.”  
  
She shrugs. “So? I have three hours to kill before Le Tigre goes on. Entertain me or else I start complaining about the fact that you haven’t had a female director on in two years.”  
  
“Sofia won’t return our calls,” Joe says distractedly, still staring at Nick. “If you’re not saying that, then what _are_ you saying?”  
  
“I’m saying – “ Nick wishes that the fire alarm would go off or a UFO would land outside the window. _Anything_ to get out of this conversation. “I’m not trying to say anything about your, like, professionalism or anything. That’s not the point. He just has a reputation, is all, and you’ve got too much else going on to get wrapped up in that.”  
  
Joe rolls his eyes, and this is why Nick hates arguing with him – his flighty older brother becomes infuriatingly logical in the face of confrontation. “I’m not going to run off and have bareback sex with a screenwriter just because he _leaned_ , Nicholas. Please tell me that you give me more credit than that.”  
  
“I do,” Nick says sulkily, more seventeen than twenty-seven. “I just didn’t like it, okay?”  
  
Joe shrugs. “Okay,” he says, returning to his burger.  
  
Nick blinks a few times, disbelieving. “’Okay’? That’s it? End of conversation?”  
  
Joe swallows, throat working. “I know you didn’t like it, and I know that’s why you were bitchy. I just wanted to hear you _say_ it.”  
  
“You two are boring,” Louise announces, getting up and swiping her beer off the table. “I’m going to go scandalize the News division.”  
  
“You just wanted to hear me say it,” Nick repeats as Louise flounces out of the room. “Have you recently fallen and hit your head or something?”  
  
Joe smiles behind his thick glasses, reaching over to pat Nick on the shoulder. His biceps are straining the seams of his too-small flannel shirt. “No. It’s just nice to hear you admit to being irrational once in a while.”  
  
Nick doesn’t think he’s being irrational at all. His brother is an attractive man who makes out with everyone, and Dustin Lance Black is an attractive man who sleeps with everyone. It’s not a particularly outrageous logistical leap to assume that, had he not interrupted, he’d be stuck making scrambled eggs for Lance in their kitchen tomorrow morning while Joe wanders around looking spectacularly fucked. He can’t tell Joe this, of course, just like he can’t tell him that he didn’t feel like turning his iPod to maximum volume to drown out the sounds of his brother coming against sheets Nick had just changed that morning.  
  
And it doesn’t matter if Nick _was_ being irrational, anyway, because now Joe will come home with _him_ , and they’ll play a few rounds of Halo before working on the lyrics Nick’s writing with Ted Leo and falling asleep in Nick’s room. Tomorrow morning, Nick will make scrambled eggs for Joe alone, and they’ll run over the interview questions for Mike Birbiglia while drinking black coffee and kicking each other under the table.  
  
“Okay,” Nick finally replies, because the status quo has been preserved and he’s fine with that, for now.  
  
*  
  
Kevin’s making barbecued spare ribs, so they spend Saturday in New Jersey, trying to keep Mark and Jacob from ruining every single shirt they collectively own.  
  
“It’s like you don’t even want to _eat_ the sauce,” Joe says, passing Jacob another handful of napkins. “It tastes really good if you’re not smearing it all over your face, just as a suggestion.”  
  
Jacob sticks his tongue out in reply.  
  
“Hey! You do that again and I’m cutting it off,” Danielle says from across the table. She’s trying to feed Noah steamed peas, with limited success. “We don’t stick our tongues out at people. It’s not nice – Kevin, that goes for you, too.”  
  
Kevin has the grace to look guilty for a split-second before crossing his eyes at her. “You’re no fun. I should have married the video girl instead.”  
  
“Then your children would have been horribly annoying and unlovable,” she says smoothly, corralling Mark and wiping off his cheek with her free hand. “No running with our mouths full, either. You’ll trip, you’ll choke, you’ll die, and Uncle Nick will have to write a sad piano song about it.”   
  
Joe very obviously tries not to snort into his mashed potatoes. He fails.  
  
Nick picks up two ribs and taps them on his plate like drumsticks. “Hmm. What rhymes with ‘Heimlich maneuver’?”  
  
“Remover,” says Caleb.  
  
“Vancouver,” says Joe.  
  
“I have to go to the bathroom,” says Mark, and Danielle quickly releases him from her motherly death-grip.  
  
Nick hums for a second before putting his food back down. “Neither of those words really work with the song, so no one’s allowed to choke, okay? Uncle Nick isn’t feeling that jam.”  
  
They make it through the rest of the meal without incident, and Nick finds himself listening to Caleb describe his dinosaur collection in minute detail while Joe puts in _The Lion King_ for Mark and Jacob. In the month since they visited the museum, his nephew has become a full-fledged dinosaur expert with a stegosaurus desk lamp and a globe with a rock glued to the Yucatan Peninsula. Caleb has dismembered tiny plastic dinosaurs and scattered the parts throughout the Gulf of Mexico.  
  
“Can you tell me more about this?” Nick says, pointing to a brontosaurus head and hoping that he doesn’t have to tell his brother and sister-in-law that they have a budding sociopath on their hands.  
  
Caleb nods excitedly, picking up the globe. It’s huge in his small hands. “Scientists think that the dinosaurs all became extinct because of a giant asteroid hitting Earth. There’s a really big crater right here, and they think this is where it hit. They think there’s other craters, like in England and Russia, that might have killed dinosaurs, so I need to find the right rocks for those, and then they’ll go on here and it’s going to be _so awesome_.”  
  
“Totally awesome,” Nick agrees, feeling his phone vibrate. He taps the screen to find a message from Joe.  
  
 _this movies way too full of angts for kids, dude_  
  
He smiles. _i think you mean angst_  
  
“Who’s that?” Caleb asks, putting the globe back on his desk and coming over to stand next to Nick.  
  
Nick pockets his phone and drapes an arm around Caleb’s shoulders. “Your uncle,” he says. “He thinks _The Lion King_ is too sad for kids. It really freaked him out when we were little, actually. I don’t think he ever got over it.”  
  
Nick very clearly remembers sitting in their small living room, maybe fifteen miles from where he stands now, wearing a Timon and Pumbaa t-shirt and patting eight-year-old Joe on the back as he cried through Mufasa’s death scene. Nick had just wanted to listen to the songs, but Joe got really into the story, identifying a little too much with Simba and refusing to fast-forward through the sad parts.  
  
“It’s part of the story,” he’d said when Nick had grabbed for the remote, wanting his big brother to stop crying and feel better. “It’s not as good at the end if you don’t watch this part, Nicky. The sad stuff makes the happy stuff better when it comes.”  
  
Nick had shrugged and relinquished control of the remote, taking Joe’s word as gospel per usual. He reminds his older brother about this when Caleb tugs him down the stairs and deposits him on the rec room couch.  
  
Joe gives Nick a half-smile, watching as Caleb drops down into the beanbag chair Mark is currently occupying. “It’s still true, man. Like, watching Scar fall into the ravine is way more satisfying after you’ve cried over Mufasa.”  
  
“Watching the Yankees win is better after you had to watch the Red Sox celebrate on your field,” Nick agrees, tucking his legs underneath him Indian-style.  
  
Joe nods. “Dessert’s tastier after you actually eat the brussels sprouts instead of hiding them in your napkin and throwing them out the window later.”  
  
“Not happening,” Jacob interjects from his spot on the floor.  
  
“Not part of this conversation,” Joe replies, kicking at Jacob with socked feet. “And you’re lucky I’m not telling your parents about that right now.”   
  
Jacob squeals and rolls over to the beanbag chair, propping himself up against Mark’s side, the three of them stacked next to each other in a puppy pile that’s entirely too familiar to Nick. He’s glad Caleb likes dinosaurs instead of guitars, for now.  
  
“No one’s telling their parents anything at the moment,” he whispers to Joe, checking to make sure the boys are fully engrossed in the movie. “The baby’s sleeping and the door’s locked. And dead-bolted. And there’s probably a chair shoved under the doorknob.”  
  
Joe makes a face. “How the hell many nephews are we going to end up with, at this rate?”  
  
Nick shrugs. “Remember when they got married and you bought Kev a box of condoms? And wrapped them up in bridal shower wrapping paper? And he looked all horrified and threw them at your head?”  
  
“Joke was on him, in the end,” Joe says, laughing as Nick leans in, their shoulders touching. “I gave them to Dani and she was absolutely _thrilled_.”  
  
Joe is warm and solid, and Nick can’t keep himself from snuggling down on the couch, tucking himself into the crook of Joe’s arm. He feels Joe’s hand slide up into his hair, knows Joe is tugging stubborn curls straight before letting them bounce back into shape.   
  
It’s cozy like this, and when Nick’s too tired to fantasize about long makeout sessions and Joe’s thighs bracketing his, he really does think that this could be enough.  
  
It’s not, of course, but he can pretend for a while. Pretend that Caleb and Jacob and Mark really are theirs, that this is _their_ big suburban house filled with family photos and Transformers, that he and Joe are just like any other couple spending a Saturday night in with the kids. Pretend that they’ll put the boys to bed after the movie ends and brush their teeth together at the sink, hips bumping against cold ceramic before finding soft skin. Pretend that they’ll end the night sliding into bed together and trading quiet, chaste kisses until they fall asleep pressed up against each other, whispering _I love you_ as they drift towards unconsciousness.  
  
Being in love is better once you know how it feels to have your heart broken, and Nick’s an expert on both at this point.   
  
If he leaves out a few key details, it’s just like the real thing.  
  
*  
  
In theory, they take turns buying groceries.  
  
In reality, Joe would have them living off frozen pizza and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, so Nick wakes up early every Sunday morning and drags a partially conscious Joe to the enormous Whole Foods at Columbus Circle. Nick spends a good half an hour in the produce section, sorting through bins of swiss chard and enormous tangelo sculptures, trying to infuse his diet with vibrant colors and obscure vitamins. Joe is frequently photographed falling asleep in a booth near the prepared foods section, ready to faceplant into a ham and cheese omelet.  
  
“I don’t even know what this is,” Joe says from the other side of the cart. They’re standing in the pasta aisle, and he’s holding up an enormous carton of grain.  
  
Nick peers over. “That’s quinoa. You hate it. Put it down.”  
  
“I like this container,” Joe says, turning it over in his hands. “I could empty it out and use it for quarters.”  
  
Nick plucks the quinoa out of Joe’s hands and puts it back on the shelf. “Just use an old jelly jar like a normal person. Grab some crackers, will you?”  
  
“Can I get the ones shaped like bunnies?” Joe asks hopefully. He’s got a beanie tugged low over his forehead and he looks all of sixteen years old.   
  
Nick nods. “Yeah,” he says, loving how Joe’s face childishly lights up despite the dark circles bruised into the skin under his eyes. They’d made it back from Jersey at a reasonable hour, but Nick had turned on the TV and found _Casino Royale_ playing on TNT, which meant they had to watch _Quantum of Solace_ afterwards, which meant they had to spend forty-five minutes plotting to get Daniel Craig on the show next month. Joe had passed out on the couch sometime around 4 a.m., head pillowed on Nick’s thigh, and Nick had found it necessary to draw upon all his reserves of willpower to slip out of the living room and into his own bed for the night.   
  
He’d practically thrown his boxers across the room in his rush to get his hand wrapped around his cock, and he’d jerked off to the thought of Joe’s pretty pink mouth on him, lips stretched wide and his head bobbing up and down. Nick had collapsed crossways across his bed, letting the dark duvet bunch up underneath him as he worked his dick, licking his palm and savoring the damp, sticky heat. He imagined sliding his hands through Joe’s hair, holding his head still and fucking into his mouth a little bit, let himself think about easing the head of his dick against the back of Joe’s throat. He wanted to hear the obscene slurping sounds, the noises Joe makes when he reaches the bottom of a bowl of soup, wanted to look down into Joe’s eyes and feel his brother’s hands clutching at his hips.   
  
He thought about Joe smiling around him and lightly grazing the soft underside of Nick’s cock with his teeth, and Nick came just like that, the image of Joe grinning around his dick burned into the backs of his eyelids as he made his way under the covers and let sleep overtake him.  
  
He’s not really one to jerk off like a fiend, he thinks distractedly, watching Joe pick his way down the dairy aisle. He takes care of his needs, yeah, but he’s always thought he had better things to do. Then he realized that he was kind of in love with his brother and most of those better-things-to-do revolved around Joe and now he wants to fuck Joe, so there’s that. Now that he’s given himself permission to think about Joe’s eyes and lips and hands and ass, he’s stroking himself all the time, imagines himself bending Joe into all kinds of positions he doesn’t have a chance in hell of ever actually seeing. He spends most of his days half-hard and aching, waiting for the opportunity to dart into his bedroom and fuck Joe senseless within the safe, secure confines of his imagination.  
  
He feels like the careful, tentative Nick Jonas has detached himself from his own body and has floated away in shame, and the Nick who’s left behind is too lovesick to bother being cautious, too tired from years of restraint and stress to care. He sees himself lingering into Joe’s touches, taking liberties he’s never taken before; they were in line to get into Royal Oak a few days ago and Nick had slipped an arm around Joe’s waist when he noticed some Williamsburg scenester trash staring at Joe’s ass a bit too closely. Joe had laughed and pressed himself against Nick’s side, and when Nick felt the muscles of his brother’s strong thigh through two layers of too-tight Brooklyn hipster denim, he went suddenly, dizzyingly hard.  
  
He made it into the club, jerked off in the bathroom, and spent the night bitching about Vampire Weekend Afro-pop rip-offs while keeping his arm tucked around Joe’s shoulders, the brown leather of Joe’s jacket supple and warm against the edge of his hand.  
  
He doesn’t know if it’s all that wrong to love his brother when it makes him feel this good, and frankly, he doesn’t care anymore. He watches old episodes of _In Treatment_ and re-works the scenarios so that his therapist doesn’t wonder why he’s suddenly gone quiet after eight years of babbling like an unhinged dam every Wednesday morning.  
  
“Nick,” Joe says, and Nick pulls his attention back to the grocery list in his hand. The writing is smudged where he’s crumpled the paper in his sweaty palm. He tries to think about the food pyramid as he follows Joe to the bakery, his eyes on Joe’s back pockets and his heart thrumming in a comfortable rhythm that it’s taken him years to notice sounds just like the bridge of "A Little Bit Longer," the song he wrote for the boy a few steps ahead of him without even realizing it.  
  
*  
  
Joe has been afraid of Sean Hannity for years, ever since they got stuck in an elevator together during a fire drill and Joe made the mistake of calling him “Mr. Manatee” to his face, so they rarely eat in the Fox cafeteria downstairs. Conan’s buying lunch, though, so Joe sucks it up and puts in an order for two plates of chicken parmesan.  
  
“I have to say, you guys, I’m continually surprised that Louise hasn’t killed either of you yet,” Conan says by way of greeting. “Every day you remain alive is a blessing around that woman.”  
  
“We have a system,” Joe replies. “I blame everything on Nick, who blames everything on Will, who blames everything on one of the lady writers. She won’t mess with the bonds of sisterhood, she says. I think we’ve got a few more years before she actually notices.”  
  
Conan nods, understanding; Louise had been _Late Night_ ’s administrative manager before Joe nearly electrocuted himself with his own telephone and finally admitted that he needed a personal assistant. “What’s the lineup this week?”  
  
Nick chews thoughtfully before swallowing. “Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ryan Adams tonight. Elizabeth Banks, Michael Cera, and the Descendents on Thursday. Friday’s Evan Dando and a bunch of people who aren’t Evan Dando.”  
  
“You might not want to call them that,” says Conan. “Names would be helpful, I imagine.”  
  
Nick looks at Joe, who shrugs. “It’s Lizzy Caplan and Sam Rockwell. I promise not to tell, though.”  
  
“All I’m hearing is ‘not Evan Dando,’” Nick retorts, and then a few Pas from the News division enter the dining room and Joe dives under the table.  
  
Conan raises an eyebrow. “When’s he going to stop doing that?”  
  
“When we change networks,” Nick says, swiping the remaining chicken parmesan from Joe’s plate and ignoring the indignant grunts coming from beneath the tablecloth.  
  
*  
  
“I can’t believe you ate my lunch,” Joe says later, grouchy with hunger despite the Pop-Tarts Nick had banged out of the vending machine for him. They’re in the band’s practice space; Joe has followed Nick down here solely to continue complaining at him. “I was really looking forward to that.”  
  
“I didn’t want it to go to waste,” Nick responds, rifling through the sheet music on his stand. “Will, did I give you guys the notes for the P-Funk stuff?”  
  
“You jammed up my printer with it last week,” Joe interrupts. “And we’re not done. You could have, like, asked for a takeout box or something.”  
  
“Or you could stop hiding from _Fox and Friends_ interns.”  
  
“I’m not hiding. I’m choosing to remove myself from situations which I may find unpleasant in the fastest way possible,” Joe protests, perching on Nick’s desk and unsettling a few weeks’ worth of dust in the process. “It was just convenient. If they take the tablecloths out of the cafeteria, I’ll probably stop.”  
  
Nick doubts this, so he starts playing “Atomic Dog” and waits for the rest of the band to join in.  
  
“I wasn’t done,” Joe yells over Nick’s squealing guitar, but he pulls himself up onto Nick’s desk and sits there, knees brushing against stacks of lead sheets and years’ worth of unused fake books. He pulls out his iPhone and starts tapping on the screen, and Nick experiences a split-second of hope that Joe’s actually catching up on his correspondence.  
  
Then Joe begins taking pictures of his own face, and Nick can only roll his eyes and bear down on the strings.  
  
*  
  
Nick drinks too much Diet Coke before bed and sleeps fitfully, sheets too warm and feet too cold. He dreams about playing for an audience of angry interns on the salad bar in the Fox cafeteria; he starts the _Third Shift_ theme but forgets the notes ten seconds in, and he has to jump over a bin of lemons and Caleb’s entire dinosaur collection before reaching the safety of his table. He slips underneath and finds Joe there, wearing a tuxedo and a Yankees hat, tambourine dangling loosely from his fingers.  
  
“I promise not to tell,” Joe says before leaning forward and pressing a kiss to Nick’s lips, dry mouths brushing against each other, and it lasts only a few seconds before Nick feels himself struggling towards consciousness.  
  
He blinks away the stale air and pads towards Joe’s bedroom, not bothering to be quiet about it. Joe is resting on his side when Nick pushes open the adjoining door; his hair is matted flat against his forehead, but his eyes are only half-closed.  
  
“You have loud nightmares,” he says, rolling towards the edge of the bed to make room. He’s right, Nick knows; Joe has spent the last twenty-seven years of his life waking up in the middle of the night and soothing Nick back to sleep like he’s fostering a nervous colt. “What was it this time?”  
  
Nick lets himself crash to the mattress, ignoring Joe’s irritated grunt. “Performance anxiety and dinosaurs. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”  
  
“You check your levels?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You take your medication?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Then you’re just being weird for no reason,” Joe yawns, stretching against the pillows. “Go back to sleep.”  
  
Nick sighs and bunches his pillow underneath his neck. Joe’s bed always feels incrementally softer than his own. His sheets are always the right temperature, and his pillows are just that much more plush. “It’s not an automatic, dude,” he mumbles, but his speech is slowing down and the mattress is solid under their shared weight.  
  
“Is too an automatic,” Joe says, brushing Nick’s arm with his hand. “You sleep better here. You’re going to be out cold in ten minutes, tops.”  
  
It’s actually five minutes, but Joe’s not awake to gloat. Nick lets himself drift off, the light pressure of Joe’s hand on his arm tethering his body to the bed as his mind floats far, far away.  
  
*  
  
And this is how it goes; Nick and Joe living in each others’ pockets, dodging taxicabs and drinking too much coffee, and Nick’s in love with Joe but Joe’s still his brother.  
  
Nick’s resigned himself to it all, looking down the barrel of his thirties, and he knows it won’t be like this forever. Joe will meet someone (Nick doesn’t know if it’ll be a man or a woman, and frankly, he doesn’t care) and the prolonged adolescence they share will end with Nick packing his shit and moving into a one-bedroom on the Lower East Side while Joe builds a home and a family in the kitchen where Nick makes waffles on Sunday mornings.  
  
He sees Joe with the kids, sees the easy way he tucks the boys into the safe space underneath his arm, and he knows that Joe will want his own children sooner rather than later. And you don’t have babies with your brother. Nick will be Uncle Nick to Joe’s adorable children, be they biological or adopted, and he’ll take them to the zoo and the studio long after Jacob has left for college and Caleb has learned to play the piano. He’ll sit at the kids’ table at holiday dinners, partly because the kids love him and partly because he won’t be able to stand the sight of Joe and his amorphous partner, and he’ll never marry.   
  
The show will end, eventually, and Nick will compose scores for off-Broadway shows while Joe moves back to California and takes up acting again. Kevin and Dani will tell him to come to New Jersey and help Kevin with his recording protégés, but Nick will refuse; he’ll stay in New York, hiding behind the cinderblock walls of his apartment building and retreating into himself in a way that Joe’s never allowed to happen.  
  
He’ll see Joe at Christmas each year, and gradually, they’ll stop calling each other. Joe will be too wrapped up with his family and his partner and his projects and hot, startling Los Angeles sunshine to notice that Nick’s unable to leave his bedroom without hesitation. And Nick will deal with it.  
  
Nick will learn how to survive without his brother, sure, but he’ll never learn how to live without him.  
  
Until the day that everything changes.  
  
*  
  
Nick's the one who picks up the phone in Joe's office that morning, and it's John Shaffner on the other end of the line. He nods a few times before thanking the Chairman and hanging up.  
  
"We getting food?" Joe asks, intently bouncing a rubber-band ball against the wall of his office.  
  
"Not really," Nick replies slowly. "You just got an Emmy nomination."  
  
The rubber-band ball hits Joe in the forehead with a soft _thunk_ before falling to the floor, knocking his glasses askew. "Um, what."  
  
"You've been nominated for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series," Nick says, leaning over and setting Joe's glasses straight. "And before you ask, I'm not punking you. You can check the caller ID, if you want."  
  
Joe looks up, opening and closing his mouth a few times before he's actually able to form simple sentences. "This is ridiculous."  
  
Nick laughs before checking over and realizing that Joe isn't exaggerating.  
  
The thing is, no one's ever really taken them seriously before. The awards they'd gotten as a group were largely won based on the power of teenage girls with internet connections, and being nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy is an awful lot like starring in your very own Christopher Guest parody. You can write your own songs and play your own instruments and bleed yourself dry onstage every night, but doing a few photo shoots for _J-14_ is apparently enough to doom you to a full decade of irrelevance unless you propel yourself into adulthood by force. Nick's the one who craves legitimacy and Joe's the one who actively seeks it, but Kevin's the one who actually _got it_ when he sat down in a recording booth with Stef Germanotta and helped turn Bach inversions into dance hits. Kevin is a successful, respected producer with a wife and a beautiful family, and no matter how many of Nick's compositions make it to number-one or how many of Joe's jokes turn viral, they'll forever be the weird younger brothers trying to see how far they can shoot cantaloupes out of a tuba.  
  
Except now someone wants to give them an _award_ for shooting cantaloupes out a tuba, and Joe is sitting in his office chair in the News Corp building with his mouth hanging open like he's a hooked fish. Nick can tell that he’s trying to make sounds, but nothing’s happening.  
  
“Are you having a heart attack?” Nick asks, leaning down to prod at Joe’s shoulder, and that’s when Joe grabs Nick’s arm and pulls him down. Joe kisses Nick quickly on the lips, soft press of skin on skin, before drawing back and looking up at his little brother through bright, shining eyes.  
  
Nick blinks a few times, trying to memorize the feel of Joe’s lips on his before the warmth disappears, and then Joe’s laughing so hard that his chair rolls halfway across the room.  
  
“I absolutely can’t believe this,” he manages after a few minutes, jumping out of the chair and hurtling towards Nick at warp speed, knocking the wind out of him with a full-body hug. Nick hugs back, pressing his face into Joe’s shoulder as Joe grabs for the phone and yells for Louise to bring champagne and pizza and the finest cupcakes in all the land. The writers are streaming in, now, whooping and cracking open beers that Nick’s pretty sure shouldn’t be consumed at 11 in the morning, and Joe’s office is filled to the brim with sloppy creative types in indie band t-shirts while he clutches his brother like Joe’s going to disappear if he lets go.  
  
Nick’s world has just tilted on its axis, and all he can do is hang on for dear life.  
  
*  
  
Everyone wants to talk about the Emmy nod, of course. Joe's guests that first week following the announcement are all repeats, people they've known for years and who they might even consider friends; Jesse Eisenberg comes out painted like the trophy itself, and Nick nearly loses it when Joe leans over and pops the beach ball he's using as a prop for it.  
  
"You guys are all ridiculous," he says affectionately, but Nick can sense the nervousness underneath.  
  
They're up against Conan, of course, and Craig Ferguson and Joel McHale and the juggernaut that is Jon Stewart. Conan and Jon have taken home seventeen of the last twenty awards in their category, and since Joe idolizes one and adores the other, Nick doesn't really see Joe doing any heavy-duty campaigning. People always say they're just happy to be nominated, sure, but Joe means it.  
  
Nick doesn't, though. As always, Nick wants to win, and watching his sweet brother quietly accept the congratulations and compliments makes him ache. He knows Joe doesn't expect anything other than a free trip to California to come of this, and all the well-wishes are making him jittery, forcing him to focus on something he doesn't think he'll actually get.  
  
So Nick's relieved when their Friday night guests turn out to be Kevin and Stef's latest proteges: a young woman named Leigh with a Jenny Lewis voice and a Joan Baez biopic to promote, and a band full of giggly girls that Louise has been trying to force upon them for years. Kevin and Joe are their boss's brothers, here, and Nick appreciates their efforts to stick to the script.  
  
Nick and Joe are sitting in the third row of the theater, watching the guest band rehearse that morning, when Joe finally breaks. Joe's scribbling questions on a notepad and Nick's bobbing his head to the beat when Joe sighs and says, "If one more person asks me about the Emmys, I'm going to jump out the fake window."  
  
"It's a fake window for a reason," Nick replies. "It doesn't go anywhere. You'd slam into drywall and wardrobe would kill you for getting plaster all over your suit."  
  
"I'd get my point across." Joe runs a hand through his hair, dark spikes pointing every which way. "I mean, don't get me wrong. It's awesome. People are happy for me. They're happy for us, you know, and they want to make sure we know it. But -- "  
  
"It's in your way," Nick finishes. "You have a routine, and this is throwing you off."  
  
Joe nods. "Please remind me that I'm one of the luckiest bastards in the world and that I should stop complaining about this, stat."  
  
The lead guitarist hits some unreal chord in the background as Nick drapes his arm over the back of Joe's seat, the polyester material scratching at the side of his hand. "You're a lucky bastard, for sure. But you're allowed to have feelings about this. It's okay. Just acknowledge that you have famous white dude problems and move on, and you'll be fine."  
  
Joe looks over at him and smiles, and it's so warm that Nick thinks he could melt under its power. He's wearing his glasses and a knit beanie and too many necklaces, teenage rockstar accessories over a tight black t-shirt and worn-down grey jeans; he looks tired and sleepy and soft, caught off-guard by the sudden onset of adulthood. Nick wants to pull him close and rest his chin on Joe's head while telling him it'll all work out in the end, but they're technically in public; he settles for curling his arm around Joe's shoulders and kneading the hard muscle there.  
  
“You’ll be fine,” he repeats, feeling Joe relax into his touch. They sit there quietly, listening to the band smash their way through some song about the lights of Toronto, and Nick somewhat desperately hopes that Joe will believe him.  
  
*  
  
The first interview that night goes great – Will Arnett is awesome to have on the show, jumping into the skits and dropping his voice at least three octaves to get a laugh – but the girl singer is nervous and awkward, clenching the hem of her pretty blue dress and looking like she’s about to turn around and spew chunks into the fake potted plant behind her.  
  
They’ve had guests seize up like this before, and Joe knows what to do; he takes Leigh’s hand and calls for the lights to go dim, and the Cabinet plays the opening bars of “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” as Joe hams it up at the desk. He climbs out of his chair and perches on the edge of the couch, winking at the tracking camera and scraping the bottom of his vocal range, and Leigh looks at him gratefully.  
  
“I think we loosened this one up, guys,” Joe says cheerfully when he finishes, slipping back into his chair. “Now, Joan Baez is pure folk, and as anyone who’s heard your album can attest, your sound’s very different. How was it, making that switch for filming?”  
  
The girl nods, long hair falling over her shoulders as she begins talking about developing something like Joan’s trademark vibrato, and Nick watches a familiar smile cross Joe’s face. Joe’s usually pretty interested in what his guests have to say, but Nick can tell when he’s feigning politeness and when he’s actually into the topic. This is definitely the latter; his face is lit up brighter than high noon in Texas, and when the cameras stop rolling, he leans in close and whispers something in Leigh’s ear. She giggles and crosses her legs, long and beautiful and perfectly tanned.  
  
Nick feels something uneasy bubbling inside, but he swallows it down and bears down for “Diamonds and Rust” instead.  
  
*  
  
Joe’s been taking everyone who works on the show to increasingly expensive restaurants ever since the Emmy news broke, so they all throw on ties and heels and head over to Le Bernardin after taping. Nick would rather lace up his Converse and fight over naan with Joe down by NYU, but this is how his brother wants to repay his staff and Nick’s got to go along with it. Whatever. He’ll get the lobster and it’ll be fine.  
  
Kevin’s waiting for them when they get there, giddy that two of his acts have scored late-night couch time, and Joe laughs when he tells them that Stef is on her way down from an appearance on the UES; Lady Gaga and Stef Germanotta are two very different people, and Stef is the one who can carry on a dinner conversation without getting up halfway through the meal to write down a melody inspired by the fish course or something. Nick finds her oddly comforting, because she’s living proof that being a batshit insane musical genius isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. Plus, Stef’s the personality who actually wears pants once in a while.  
  
“Striped bass or surf and turf?” Joe asks Nick when they’re seated, stiff white napkins artfully arranged on pristine tables. The lighting is dim in here, and the maroon walls make Joe look flushed and pouty. “Pick for me, because I don’t know what the rest of this stuff is.”  
  
“Surf and turf,” Nick says without really bothering to check the menu; fish means white wine and meat means red, and Joe’s gorgeous when he’s drunk on red. Nick’s feeling selfish tonight, and he wants to see Joe’s lips stained purple with malbec, wants Joe sloppy and draped across him in the backseat of the car on their way home. Joe is _his_ , and he wants to remind everyone – including himself – of that fact tonight.  
  
He turns to glare at Leigh, who’d been seated at the table behind them, and gets the shock of a lifetime when he realizes that Stef has arrived and is greeting Leigh with a friendly tongue-down-the-throat kiss. Nick lets out a noise somewhere between a squeak and a gulp, drawing Joe’s attention; his brother twists in his chair, nearly dragging his tie through a bowl of soup, and laughs.  
  
“You see, Nicky, when two girls love each other very much – “  
  
“Shut up,” Nick grumbles, well aware that the blush staining his cheeks has crept up to his ears.  
  
Joe shakes his head incredulously. “It’s like you don’t even listen when Kevin’s talking half the time,” he says, which Nick guiltily recognizes as true. “Remember when he told us that Stef’s girlfriend was going to be promoting her movie and maybe she could take one of the Friday slots? I can promise you that Stef’s girlfriend isn’t Will Arnett.”   
  
“He’d make a terrible Joan Baez,” Nick says slowly. “The male pattern baldness is a real obstacle.”  
  
“You can pay attention to Will Arnett’s receding hairline, but not your brother’s career moves. I don’t get you, sometimes.” Joe takes a slurp of his soup, and Nick’s still too off-balance to tell him that he’s being disgusting. “Although Will’s pretty sexy.”  
  
“His wife would have you killed immediately,” Louise drawls from across the table. Nick counts three empty highball glasses in front of her, and she hasn’t even finished her salad course yet. “And you really _don’t_ listen to anyone besides Joe. True facts.”  
  
Nick points at the glassware. “You ordered a Cape Codder, a screwdriver, and a vodka gimlet. In that order. All made with Dragon Bleu, by the way. I should take that out of your paycheck.”  
  
“And I’d replace your insulin with Clearasil,” Louise replies, sticking out her tongue as the sommelier fills their wine goblets.   
  
Nick grabs his as soon as the guy’s done pouring and downs half a glass of Paulliac 2001 in one gulp. He doesn’t usually get drunk, but he’s been through a lot today: girls hitting on his brother and then turning out to be lesbians, wanting naan and getting stuck with unpronounceable French side dishes, losing the first two buttons on his shirt on his way to the elevator, his assistant ordering vodka distilled in diamond-encrusted barrels and bottled by trained turtledoves or whatever, and Joe looking unbearably attractive next to him in a dark grey suit to his right. He thinks getting wasted is probably an excellent way to spend his Friday night.  
  
Joe watches as Nick finishes the rest of the glass. “If I’m stuck pulling lobster chunks out of my hair later, I will actually murder you in your sleep,” he warns, reaching out and closing the small space between them; his hand is warm where it’s encircling Nick’s wrist, and Joe’s breath is already sweet with French grapes.  
  
Nick signals for another drink.  
  
*  
  
The rest of the group has moved on to caramelized custard, but Joe had called for a bottle of thirty-year-old port instead of the dessert menu, and he and Nick have managed to demolish half of it by the time the check comes.  
  
“I think the waiter dude is looking at us like we’re interfering with the _je ne sais quoi_ of his fine establishment,” Joe stage-whispers to Nick. “What’s _je ne sais quoi_ , anyway?”  
  
“I don’t know what,” Nick says, warm all over from sweet Portuguese wine and Joe’s arm draped casually across the back of his chair.  
  
Joe scowls. “You’re useless, Nicky.”  
  
“No, that’s what it _means_ ,” Nick protests as Louise groans about gay Abbott and Costello impersonators from behind a veritable wall of empty glasses. “Don’t blame me for your cultural ignorance just because you talked Mom into waiving your foreign language requirement.”  
  
“Pig Latin totally counts, dude,” says Joe, and Nick remembers the day he’d tried that argument out like it was yesterday, Joe whining his way out of elementary Spanish while Nick struggled with conjugations and irregular verbs. “Ick-nay is-ay a-ay ittle-lay unk-dray.”  
  
“So are you.” Nick drops his head back and lets it loll against his shoulders, all loose limbs and swollen mouth. Nick _loves wine._ Wine goes down smoothly, pressed fruit and tannens kindling a fire within, and wine makes him care so much less about everything. “You’ve had more than me.”  
  
“Have not,” Joe sing-songs, curling his hand around Nick’s shoulder and pulling him closer. Nick smiles as Joe fits their legs together; Nick’s thigh draped over Joe’s and the perfect slide of Merino wool trousers against firm muscle. Joe’s other hand is wrapped firmly around a newly full glass of port, and oh yeah, Nick _loves_ wine, like, _so much._  
  
“You’re so warm,” Joe mutters, turning his face against Nick’s, and the words come out in a hot breath across Nick’s cheek. “Screw offshore drilling, Nicky. You can be an alternative fuel source.”  
  
“Don’t wanna,” Nick replies, unwilling to form a coherent sentence with Joe pressed along every inch of him. He should probably be more concerned about how this looks – Joe whispering against his cheek, Nick practically sitting in Joe’s lap at this point – but everything just feels too _good._ They’re among friends, none of whom would ever betray their confidence and all of whom are just as wasted as Nick and Joe. “Got enough needles in me already.”  
  
Joe bumps his hip against the OmniPod, silent acknowledgement of its role in keeping Nick safe, keeping him alive and warm and breathing. “Okay. We won’t register you with the government or anything. Just me, okay?”  
  
“Your personal radiator,” Nick says, stealing Joe’s glass and taking a long drink. He fits his mouth over the imprint of Joe’s lips, running his tongue along the rim. “Just warn me before you turn me on, okay?”  
  
Joe’s quaking with laughter before Nick realizes what he’s said, and despite the blush creeping up his cheeks, he eventually joins in.  
  
*  
  
Kevin makes a phone call and there’s a limo outside the restaurant, and Joe barely gets his black AmEx back from the maitre’d before Louise is pushing him through the sleek car doors and on top of Nick.  
  
“I stole it,” Joe says gleefully, holding up the half-empty bottle of port and pressing it to Nick’s mouth. Nick grins and obliges Joe, opening his mouth and letting Joe tip the sweet wine down his throat, vaguely aware of Danielle shrieking unintelligibly to his left and Stef snapping photos with her phone somewhere at the other end of the cushioned bench.  
  
“Good boy,” Joe says when Nick finishes, giving him a sloppy shoulder-pat that ends up being more of a chest-fondle, and Nick just wants to be like this _all the time._  
  
“I feel like I’m at prom,” one of the girls in the band giggles, and Nick’s struck by how right she is.  
  
Nick didn’t have a prom, of course, because Nick didn’t have anything even remotely approaching a normal adolescence. He should have done this years ago, should have gotten drunk on stolen booze in the back of a limo that’s too full of too many warm, laughing bodies; he should have had some hot little piece sitting on his lap, grabbing at his lapels and breathing hot into his ear, _one more sip, Nicky, come on._  
  
He should have done this years ago, yeah. But he’s okay with doing it now, Kev tickling Dani in the background and the writers smoking out the moon-roof and Louise swigging Grey Goose straight from the bottle she found in the minibar. He’s warm and happy and surrounded by some of the kindest, most talented people on earth, and he loves them all so very, very much.  
  
“You’re so, so drunk,” Joe laughs against his jaw, and Nick realizes that he said most of that last part out loud. “I swear, I’m going to take a drink every time you tell someone that you love them.”  
  
“Go ahead,” Nick replies, smiling, because he has a lapful of warm, wriggling Joe and they’re both too far gone to care about being even remotely appropriate. Joe’s arm is hooked around Nick’s shoulders and his free hand is resting on his chest, and Nick imagines that Joe can feel his heart beating through his sweat-starched dress shirt; he slides his hand up underneath Joe’s suit jacket and hooks his fingers in Joe’s belt loops, locking Joe firmly into place.  
  
“You’re just like a seatbelt,” Joe says, and Nick fists his other hand in the loose grey fabric of Joe’s pant leg, vaguely aware that he’s got his arms looped around his brother’s hips in a way that would make most of their teenaged fans faint dead away. “Am I safe like this?”  
  
Nick knows Joe’s teasing, but that doesn’t stop him from pressing his face into the crook of Joe’s shoulder as Kevin yells out directions to some ultra-luxe wine bar across Midtown.  
  
“You always are,” he says, and he sighs happily when Joe snuggles in that much closer.  
  
*  
  
Things get a little fuzzy after that.  
  
Nick vaguely remembers venue personnel telling Joe that sir cannot bring his own wine into this establishment and perhaps sir would like to finish his beverage outside, and he thinks that they might have taken turns slugging down the port, but he can’t be sure. He knows they eventually made it inside, and he remembers several glasses of Beaujolais that he would have appreciated much more if he hadn’t been trying to beat Joe to the bottom of the bottle. It was someone’s birthday, Nick thinks, someone Kevin knows from that weird period during which he worked with Moby and wore _Free Tibet_ t-shirts all the time; there may have been singing, and he has an awful feeling that he and Joe both used their breathy Marilyn Monroe voices for it.  
  
Things get a _lot_ fuzzy after that.  
  
Cabernet sauvignon, Danielle’s taking her shoes off, “Seven Nation Army,” Joe loses a contact lens, someone found pretzels. Velvet lounge couch. Domaine de Chevalier, Kanye West is on the stereo, Kanye West is in the bar, Kevin’s face is red, high-pitched shatter of breaking glassware, Nick wants a cheeseburger. Joe is soft, Kanye West has left the building. Veuve Cliquot, Nick’s mouth is numb, Joe pockets the cork, too-dim bathroom lights. Nick wants to stay here forever. Big brown eyes. The Cure’s _Greatest Hits_ , Joe’s hand tangled in Nick’s tie, Kevin wants hot dogs, Dani falls asleep. Sitting half on Joe’s lap and feeling the sharp edge of his hipbone, pressure at the base of Nick’s spine, sharing a glass of Penfolds Grange. Kevin’s carrying Dani out and her hair is loose, hanging down over his shoulder; she looks about seventeen. “Fire in Cairo” low and drowsy in the background, Joe’s cologne, Joe’s tie, Joe’s shirt Joe’s hair Joe’s face Joe’s eyes Joe’s mouth and everything fades to black.  
  
Luckily for everyone, Lindsay Lohan drives her SUV into the front parlor of a Montauk mansion that night, so the photo of Nick passed out in Joe’s lap is little more than a Gawker Media footnote.


	3. Chapter 3

  
*

They’re both viciously hungover the next morning, Joe kicking Nick from across the bed and moaning about how he wants to die, so Nick gives in and calls Louise with a breakfast order.

“Something greasy,” he mumbles into the phone, pushing his face further into the pillow like he’s trying to channel the pounding pressure into the goose down. “And fast.”

Louise shows up twenty minutes later with a thermos of coffee and a king-sized bottle of aspirin. She checks Nick’s levels, proclaims them both idiots, and calls in an order to the Cosmic Diner.

“Urrrgh,” Nick manages, fumbling the bottle of water she forks over. When he eventually gets the cap off and takes a swig, he can practically _feel_ his brain absorbing it, clear stream of relief shooting straight up through his sinuses and flooding the sources of the throbbing pain behind his eyes. He gulps down four aspirin and closes his eyes, waiting for the dullness to wash over him.

Joe grunts something that could be either “thank you” or “tomatoes” before Louise pulls him upright and forces the little white pills into his mouth.

“Swallow,” she says menacingly, and Nick feels a light blanket settle around his hips; he belatedly realizes that they’d fallen asleep on top off Joe’s comforter when they’d arrived home. “And go back to sleep, both of you.”

The mattress shifts, like Joe rolled over and thought better of it.

He hears Louise sigh. ”I don’t care if you fucking snuggle or whatever, just keep drinking water and don’t try to get up until I say so.”

“Nargh,” Joe replies, and as Louise’s footsteps fade towards the kitchen, Nick feels Joe’s familiar weight pressed against his side. They’re both under the blanket, Joe wrapping his hand around Nick’s bicep and Nick hooking his index finger in the pocket of Joe’s sweatpants, and the cocoon of soft-warm-cozy lulls Nick downward towards sleep. Joe’s whispering something nonsensical into Nick’s shoulder, and Nick can feel the pain receding already.

*

“We’ll be flying out of Teterboro on Wednesday that week,” Louise says later, not bothering to finish her mouthful of hash browns before speaking. She talks around the potatoes, chewing and outlining their schedule simultaneously, and Nick suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. “And yes, I booked a car service, so don’t bitch about getting lost in Jersey.”

“It was one time,” Joe protests. He’s sitting Indian-style on the tabletop, and Nick’s not nearly alert enough to scold him for it; anyway, Louise is laying out their travel plans for Emmy week, and since Joe’s actually _nominated_ for one, Nick thinks maybe he’s allowed to misbehave on the furniture. “What time?”

“Six a.m., and you can blame the four a.m. wake-up call on your mother,” Louise replies, tapping away at her laptop. “She booked something for the kids at one in L.A., so we need to land at nine, West Coast time, because she wants them all to nap before she takes them wherever the hell she’s taking them. I’m thrilled to see that she’s moved on to over-scheduling the next generation,” she adds dryly.

Nick bites his tongue, although he privately thinks the tension between their mother and their assistant is hilarious. “She’s bringing them for haircuts.”

“Because New Jersey is famous for its lack of hairdressers.”

Joe shrugs, cradling the cardboard Cosmic omelette container between his knees. “It’s Mom. I’ve learned not to ask.”

“You’ve learned not to call,” Nick corrects him. “Louise, please tell me that you found something for Dad to do that week.”

“Three-day charity golf tournament in Escondido,” Louise says proudly. “We send him down on Thursday morning and he’s back on Saturday night. Just in time for church on Sunday.”

Joe swallows a hunk of bacon. “And will you be joining us for Kevin Senior’s standard Sabbath-day recitations of all the ways in which I’m going to Hell and taking Nick along with me?”

Nick groans inwardly, partly because he doesn’t like hearing Joe talk about Dad that way and partly because he knows Joe’s right.

Joe was never particularly close with their father, and the relationship only deteriorated once Dad stopped being Dad and started being a dad-ager; Nick remembers Dad locking himself in his home office the day Joe threw a change of clothes in his backpack and announced he was moving to New York, both of them stony-faced as Mom quietly retreated to her bedroom with a bottle of wine left over from Kev and Dani’s wedding. Nick remembers the look on his father’s face when Nick had decided to follow Joe back East two months later, and yeah, he even remembers the weird tremble in Kevin’s voice when he’d called to say that he and Dani wanted to raise their family in Jersey, knows that Kevin was planning on calling their parents as soon as he hung up.

Mom and Dad had moved into a house across town from Kev and Dani as soon as Jacob was born, and Nick calls when he can; Joe calls Mom when he can, at least; and Kevin is in and out of their house all the time with cartons of apple juice and extra copies of all Mark’s favorite DVDs. They all live within an hour of each other, back where it all started with Broadway shows and demo tapes and Kevin teaching himself the guitar. It’s exactly what Nick had imagined as a kid, actually; they’re living something very close to their old lives, just amplified by success and money and the limelight-glow that they’ll never fully shake.

But ten years ago, Nick picked Joe over everything and everyone in the world, and they all know it.

Nick’s therapist has a field day with the fact that Nick blames the dissolution of his family’s ties to each other on himself, so Nick doesn’t even think about telling her that he wouldn’t hesitate to tear his family apart over and over, again and again, as long as he got Joe in the end.

“As much as I enjoy your father’s attempts to save my heathen soul, I think I’ll pass,” Louise is saying, and when Joe grabs for Nick’s hand, Nick silently lets him take it. “And before you ask, I’ve booked you both into a nominees’ brunch with Conan, so you get to skip The Fire and Brimstone of Paul Kevin Jonas The First.”

“You’re the best,” Joe says, squeezing Nick’s hand and dousing his home fries with a liberal dose of ketchup.

Louise nods. “I anticipated your gratitude, so I’m at the next table with Alison Brie and Danny Pudi.”

Nick lets the conversation wash over him, Louise refusing to let Joe interfere with any of her carefully laid plans, and yeah, he’d do it all over again if he had to. He’d pack up his life and his fame and move across the country, settling into the one-bedroom Hell’s Kitchen apartment Joe had rented for the sake of realism and shaking off the paparazzi until they didn’t even bother following him anymore. He’d shrug off the phone calls from management and ignore his father’s calls, because there’s always going to be another subway train to catch, another taxicab to dodge, and another baseball game with Joe saving a seat for him in the field boxes. He’d give up his life and start a new one, because this – planning a trip to the Emmy Awards with Joe’s hand casually slipped into his own – is the end result.

He squeezes Joe’s hand, and Joe squeezes back.

*  
  
Nick hasn’t been on tour since he was seventeen years old, but that doesn’t matter much to his subconscious; he can’t get on an airplane without feeling his stomach twist with the half-sick anticipation of another venue, another show, another opportunity to strive for perfection. Today is no exception, despite Nick downing three of Joe’s Xanax tablets before the car even showed up.  
  
He’s floating in and out of consciousness, dull roar of the engines echoing through his bones, and his throat is dry already. He knows that his only pressing engagement after deplaning is kicking Kevin’s ass at golf, but he still feels like he should be grabbing for lozenges, planning to use an extra packet of throat-coat tonight, maybe pressing a warm compress to his neck. It’s always hard to play LA, because everyone they know shows up and all the music publications send their best writers to Hollywood; Nick finishes the LA concerts drained and pale, and he’s always sent off to his room to recover while Joe runs around downtown with Garbo and Jack. Joe comes in late when they’re here, and Nick keeps him up until four in the morning with note-by-note dissections of every song they played that night and some they didn’t. Then they’ll get up the next morning and do it again, because Los Angeles is a two-show town, and Nick wishes that they’d booked the Bowl instead of the Staples Center – it’s closer to Toluca Lake, and maybe he can just crawl home and fall –  
  
“Drink your juice, honey,” his mom is saying, and Nick jerks out of his half-asleep state convinced that he’s sixteen years old again. Denise is holding up two bottles of juice – one apple, one cranberry – and Nick glances down to find Caleb pressed against his side.  
  
He’s still an adult, Kevin still has kids. _That’s_ a relief.  
  
“Can I have the apple?” Caleb asks hopefully, and Nick nods, accepting the cranberry.  
  
“Your brothers are watching _Nemo_ in the lounge,” Denise says to Caleb, who shakes his head and snuggles in closer to Nick. Caleb hates flying, no matter how comfortable the plane; he clings to an adult from takeoff until landing, and this time, it’s Nick’s turn. Nick doesn’t mind, really. Together, the boys are a handful, but Caleb on his own is quiet and thoughtful and old beyond his years.  
  
Sometimes, Nick’s grateful for Caleb’s fear of flying. It’s one of the few things that make him seem like he’s actually seven years old.  
  
“What about _my_ brothers?” he asks, cracking open the cap of his juice. “Do I get a status update, too?”  
  
Denise smiles. “Kevin’s with Danielle and Noah in the back. Frankie’s sulking somewhere in the bunks about that girl he’s dating. And Joseph’s in the rear lounge. I think he was trying to read, but you can imagine how well that went.”  
  
“He passed out,” Nick guesses. They were up at four, and to say that Joe’s not a morning person is like saying the Battle of the Alamo didn’t work out very well for the Texans.  
  
“Within minutes.” Denise pats Caleb on the head. “Sure you don’t want to come watch the movie?”  
  
Caleb turns his head into the hollow beneath Nick’s arm. “I’m sure,” he says, and Nick can tell that he’s trying to keep his breathing slow and even so Denise won’t usher him off to spend the rest of the flight between Danielle and Kevin. Caleb has panic attacks sometimes, and the whole family is on alert at times like these; Danielle insists that he put in earphones and close his eyes, and Kevin gets this terrified look on his face like he thinks he’s failed as a father because his child is upset. Caleb always notices, and that makes everything so much worse.  
  
Nick rubs his back, because he remembers Mom and Dad hovering over him for years, guilt-ridden and ashamed that Joe had noticed something was wrong with Nick before they had. He knows what it’s like to be a kid struggling with something so unpredictable and out-of-control and too grown-up to properly comprehend for years to come.  
  
“It’s okay,” Nick whispers to Caleb after his mother leaves. “We’ll stay right here for as long as you want, dude.”  
  
“Thanks, Uncle Nicky,” Caleb says, voice small, and Nick thanks God and the seraphim that they’re on a chartered flight.  
  
They’ve toned it down over the years – Kevin even flies business-class on occasion – but Nick misses these private planes sometimes. He likes the freedom of stretching out on a couch rather than tilting his seat back and grimacing when he hears the person behind him sigh with displeasure. His guitar is easily accessible, and if they have to make an emergency water landing, he thinks the three-month supply of diapers Dani packed for Noah will be excellent flotation devices. And even if he can’t get up to play a few chords or take a lap around the plane, he has the luxury of settling back into the couch and wrapping his arms around his anxious nephew.  
  
They’re somewhere over Kansas when Nick loses all feeling in his right leg, cramped by sixty-five pounds of sleeping seven-year-old boy. He’s trying to figure out how this will affect his golf swing when Joe wanders in, hair mussed and eyes sleepy, and sits down on the other end of the couch.  
  
He gives Nick a quick once-over before asking, “Arm or leg?”  
  
“Leg,” Nick confesses. “But my arm’s going to be the next to go.”  
  
Joe laughs and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Okay, hand him over.”  
  
They facilitate the trade as quietly as possible, Joe tucking his hands under Caleb’s arms and shuffling him away from Nick. Nick gets up slowly and stretches, making sure to keep most of his weight on his good leg, and Caleb yawns.  
  
“Uncle Nicky?” he mutters, eyes still closed.  
  
“Uncle Nicky needs to get up,” Joe replies softly. “I hope you don’t mind Uncle Joe cooties, though.”  
  
Caleb snuffles and settles in against Joe’s side. “No, they’re okay,” he says, words trailing off as he drifts back to sleep.  
  
_Thanks,_ Nick mouths as the pins and needles begin to make their way up and down his leg, circulation returning to normal.  
  
Joe smiles. _No problem._ He drops a kiss to the crown of Caleb’s head, eyes slipping shut and lashes fanning dark against his cheeks, and Nick can’t help but mimic the gesture on his way back to the lounge; Caleb’s hair is downy-soft, and Nick smiles at Joe when he pulls back.  
  
Joe’s grinning, all mischievous and sparkling. _Where’s mine?_  
  
Nick rolls his eyes and leans over, kissing the top of Joe’s head, too. Joe’s hair is bristly and stiff with leftover gel, but he still smells like coffee and citrus soap and the fabric softener he insists that Nick buy. He feels Joe’s hand skim along his lower back, light pressure where his t-shirt ends and his jeans begin, and he pulls back slowly.  
  
Joe shakes his head. _Not there, here._  
  
And he taps his lips with his free hand.  
  
They used to kiss all the time when they were little, big wet smacks that ended with Joe saying, “I loooooove you, Nicky,” until Nick started school and Denise had to sit them down and haltingly explain that they couldn’t do that anymore. It happened from time to time when they were teenagers: quick, happy presses of mouth on mouth when something particularly awesome happened, and Kevin would complain that no one ever kissed _him_ when their albums went to number-one. Eventually, they stopped making albums and Kevin found someone who’d kiss him anyway, but Nick thinks the morning of the Emmy nomination might have been the first time Joe’d kissed him in nearly ten years.  
  
Dreams and shower fantasies aside, he’s definitely missed it.  
  
Nick sighs and pushes forward, pressing his lips to Joe’s. He keeps it short, of course, but he still notices the faint taste of cranberry juice lingering around the sides of Joe’s mouth – Denise must have made the rounds with her never-ending supply of beverages – and the chapsticked softness there.  
  
Joe follows him a few inches when he draws back, and they’re so close that Nick couldn’t avoid his gaze even if he wanted to. Joe’s pupils are dilated, leaving just a thin rim of brown iris, and he’s staring at Nick with the same expression he had on his face when he finally passed his driving test: satisfied, pleased, utterly triumphant.  
  
_Thank you,_ Joe mouths, brushing a hand through Caleb’s hair and smiling up at his younger brother.  
  
Nick smiles back, shaky and thrown, and stumbles off towards the lounge. He never smokes, but he now knows he’ll be bothering Louise for a cigarette the instant this plane lands.

*

Sunlight is just beginning to filter through the hotel blinds on Sunday morning – Emmy morning, as they’ve come to think of it – when Jacob bursts into Nick’s room and leaps onto the bed.

“Uncle Joe says you have to get up,” Jacob says, bouncing in place. He’s wearing plaid sleep pants and a too-big Kings of Leon t-shirt that belongs to Joe. “He says you need to blow this joint before Pops gets back.”

“I am up,” Nick replies, taking out his earbuds. “But dude, just think about how differently this conversation would be going if I’d been asleep.”

Jacob throws himself down next to Nick and pokes his forehead. Nick should really be getting annoyed right about now, but it’s Jacob; he’s perky and hyperactive and adorable, even if he’s already started flat-ironing his hair. He has Danielle’s tan skin and Kevin’s wide, disbelieving eyes, but his mind and mannerisms are completely like Joe’s at ten years old. “You would have made a grumpy noise and said some words I’m not allowed to repeat if I don’t want to get sent to my room. Which is unfair, Uncle Nick, because I have to go to church and you don’t.”

Nick laughs and grabs for Jacob’s hand. “Welcome to being a kid. Grown-ups get to boss you around, and you don’t get to do anything about it. But I’ll tell you a secret, if you want.”

Jacob looks contemplative. “Okay,” he replies.

Nick pulls him in close, touches their foreheads together. “Someday, you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to be a grown-up. And no one will be able to tell you what to do anymore, but you have to try your hardest to make good decisions.” He thinks of their Disney Channel colleagues, scattered up and down the California coast in various states of disrepute, and how easily Joe could have been among them. “And sometimes knowing what’s good and what’s bad isn’t as easy as it was when you were a kid.”

Jacob nods. “I know,” he says, far too seriously, and Nick has to hold in a snort. Jacob is in the fourth grade and is currently working on a poster about the Great Wall of China. He generally eats his vegetables and has a little girlfriend named Ellie who comes over after school and beats all three of the older boys at soccer on a routine basis. Kevin is teaching him the guitar, but it’s all in fun; his childhood so far has been refreshingly normal, and Nick thanks God every day that Kevin and Danielle are the attentive, caring parents that they are.

“So you’ll make good decisions?” he says finally, ruffling his nephew’s hair. “Like maybe not jumping on Uncle Nick’s bed when he might be sleeping?”

Jacob scrambles up and shrugs. “Okay, but Uncle Joe told me to do that. And he’s a grown-up.”

“That’s still up for debate,” Nick says under his breath as Jacob scampers out of the room. They’d gone to Disneyland the day before and Joe had nearly knocked several probably innocent teenagers out of his way in his dash to be at the front of the line for Splash Mountain. He’d gleefully stolen giant hunks of Mark’s oversized bag of cotton candy; he’d gotten his picture taken with Pluto.

Joe’s been kissing Nick every night before bed since they landed in California, warm and chaste like when they were kids, and Nick’s begun incorporating it into his nightly routine: carry Caleb back to his parents’ room, give Noah a good-night peck, wash his face, brush his teeth, floss diligently, wait for Joe to kiss him, crawl into bed, and jerk off until he falls asleep as Joe sings loudly in the shower. He has absolutely no idea what it means, of course – the relentless sunshine could be sending Joe on an extended nostalgia trip through their teenage years – but he never wants it to end. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when they’re back home, what he’s going to do when they retire to their separate bedrooms without Joe’s lips grazing against his before he sets his alarm for the next morning.

As if on cue, Joe pokes his head through the doorway.

“Morning, dude. You’d better get dressed if you want to safely avoid Kevin Jonas Senior’s Hour of Power.” He strolls in, shirt half-buttoned and trouser cuffs dragging along the ground, and drapes a dry-cleaning bag over the back of the desk chair. “And before you ask, you have to wear this. No substitutions. Louise picked it all out and sent it down for ironing. I think she may have purposely wrinkled everything else we own, actually.”

Nick knows he needs to get up and shower, because he certainly doesn’t want to run into Dad any sooner than he has to, but Joe is tucking his shirt into his trousers and fastening his belt; Nick just wants to lie here a little bit longer, watching Joe’s nimble fingers play with his buckle and imagine everything’s happening in reverse. He wants Joe to unbutton his shirt and crawl into bed with him, wants to kiss his way down that exposed strip of peachy-gold skin, wants to leave marks where the trail of dark hair disappears into the waistband of his trousers. He wants Joe to haul him back up and kiss him breathless, rolling them over in the big hotel bed and tugging at his hair and ignoring the knocks on the door when they inevitably come.

He lets himself watch Joe button the cuffs of his shirt before he gets up and pads over to the bathroom, brushing his hand over Joe’s shoulder blades as he goes.

*

“This place is just one enormous suburb,” Louise complains as the car stops at yet another six-lane intersection, and Nick just looks across the backseat at Joe and shrugs.

Joe had been the one to choose New York, claiming that Los Angeles stifled the creativity out of everything, but Nick’s never minded LA all that much. He prefers Dallas for warm weather and Manhattan for playing music, but LA has great sushi and nice landscaping and really awesome amenities for celebrities. He’d run into Michael Cera in the hotel lobby that morning on their way to the nominees’ brunch, and they’d traded a few excited sentences about the convenience of having Coffee Bean lattes delivered right to your guest suite.

And LA is where Joe keeps kissing him – it happened again this morning, right before Louise got off the elevator, Joe sliding across the backseat and threading his hands through Nick’s hair. It had been fast but hard, and it took all the composure Nick could muster to school his face into a neutral expression when their assistant climbed into the car and kicked Joe in the shins for not wearing the tie she’d sent down.

So yeah, Nick’s okay with Los Angeles right now.

“I mean, what is this shit?” Louise is saying, holding up a half-finished Starbucks cup with distaste. “This isn’t coffee. This is the dregs that you scrape out of the coffeepot before you shove it in the dishwasher. And the buildings are all squatty. And everyone’s too tan, if you ask me.”

Joe snickers, and Nick joins in. Louise grew up on Dorchester Avenue in South Boston, which apparently means that she’s entitled to hate everything about cities that aren’t hers without giving too much in the way of explanation.

“You’re tan right now, Lou,” Joe says, but not before he tucks his legs beneath him and out of her kicking range. She tries and fails anyway. “And you’re drinking that coffee anyway.”

“Shut up,” Louise growls, flipping her oversized sunglasses down. “And have a little more respect. I got you moved to Conan’s table rather than Kimmel’s.”

“Thank you,” Nick says diplomatically, at the same time as Joe retorts, “I can’t respect you in those sunglasses. You look like someone’s drunk Boca Raton grandmother.”

Louise throws her Blackberry at him. “One more outburst and I’m sending you to the red carpet in short breeches and knee socks and parading you directly past the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers.”

Joe tosses the device back to her. “Is there a reason I haven’t fired you yet?”

“Because I’m excellent at my job and you couldn’t live without me?” Louise suggests.

“Because you don’t know where the Human Resources office actually is,” Nick supplies helpfully. “Oh, and she’s good at her job.”

“Thank you, Nicholas. You get to wear the sexy tux tonight.”

Nick grins at Joe. “See? I get the sexy tux.”

“I hate you both,” Joe groans, twisting in his seat and flopping down, legs askew and his head nestled in Nick’s lap. Nick tries not to shiver when Joe nuzzles at his thigh and drums out a formless beat with his fingertips.

Louise has indeed switched their table, and they’re sandwiched between Conan’s family and J.J. Abrams. Nick talks about the latest Modest Mouse album with Conan while Joe begs J.J. for _Undercovers_ spoilers; they eat fruit salad and drink sparkling water, and it would all be totally normal except for how Joe’s hand is clamped firmly on Nick’s knee, his palm hot and damp against Nick’s clean linen trousers. He slips his arm around Nick’s waist on their way back to the car, and it’s still there when Nick unlocks the door to their hotel suite and steps inside.

He should be asking Joe what, exactly, he thinks he’s doing; they can only go so far before someone notices that their touches are lasting far beyond what could be considered brotherly, and he’s getting a little tired of wandering around Los Angeles half-hard and aching. He should be extracting himself from Joe’s arm, should be crossing the suite and firmly closing the door to his own room, should be grabbing a few hours’ sleep on his own before he gets the phone call telling him that his tuxedo is ready.

He yawns instead.

Joe laughs. “Naptime for Nicky,” he says, using his arm to steer Nick over to his bed. “Come on, shoes off. We’ve got a few hours before we’ve got to put on the monkey suits, dude.”

Nick silently allows Joe to pull off his loafers and settle the two of them together on top of the comforter, facing each other from separate pillows. Joe takes his glasses off and stretches over Nick to place them on the bedside table, and Nick tries not to look startled when Joe settles his hand on Nick’s hip.

“You look nice in white,” Joe says quietly, bunching the thin fabric between his fingers. “Too bad white tuxes are only for, like, meeting the Queen and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Nick mumbles, trying to keep his eyes open. He’d opted for decaf that morning, hoping less caffeine would calm his nerves, but now he’s just exhausted at noon and struggling to stay awake long enough to get a clue as to what Joe’s whole deal is.

Joe leans in and kisses him softly, lips still closed, and he pulls away after a few seconds like usual.

“Go to sleep, Nick,” he says quietly, and Nick does.

*

When Nick wakes up two hours later, his phone is shrieking at him and Joe is nowhere in sight. He thinks the two might be related, somehow, and is proven correct when he sees Kevin’s name on his caller ID.

“Get dressed. We’ve got a problem,” Kevin barks in the same tone of voice he uses to tell Jacob to get down from that roof _now, young man,_ so Nick shrugs halfway into his all-black tuxedo and pads down the hallway in socked feet. He assumes that if Joe were dead, Kevin would have said something immediately, so he doesn’t bother rushing. If he wrinkles this tux, he thinks, there will be at least three people lined up to murder him in cold blood over it.

Kevin yanks open the door to his family’s suite before Nick can even knock. “Your idiot brother has actually reached new heights of stupidity,” he says, fumbling with his bowtie as he steps back.

“Why is he only _my_ idiot brother? Did you divorce us when I wasn’t looking?” Nick replies, pushing past Kevin and into the hotel room.

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Kevin says darkly as he walks out of the room. “Dani took the boys down to Mom and Dad’s room for the duration of whatever the hell this is. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell my kids why Uncle Joe looks like one of the scary men on the subway that they’re not supposed to talk to right now.”

As the door slams shut behind Kevin, Nick wonders how bad it really could be, and then remembers that Joe once stayed awake for seventy-two straight hours before the Grammys.

He steels himself and goes into the master bedroom.

At first, he thinks they might be okay; Joe’s just sitting there against the pillows, fully dressed for the ceremony and barefoot with his legs kicked out across the floral comforter. He’s got his glasses on, both lenses appear to be intact, and he seems to have shaved within the last twelve hours. Nick crosses the room and sits down at the edge of the bed, relieved that Kevin has apparently lived up to thirty-three years’ worth of expectations and overreacted once again.

“Heya, Nicky,” Joe says cheerfully, and that’s when Nick notices the half-empty pill bottle on the nightstand.

“Oh, _no,_ ” he groans, grabbing for Joe’s prescription bottle of Xanax.

Nick deals with his demons by attending weekly therapy sessions and talking about his own unreasonable expectations for himself; Joe made it through two months of psychiatric appointments before declaring that he had better things to do with his time. He’d kept the anti-anxiety script, though, for those times when the hot fluorescent spotlight gets to be too much for both of them.

Apparently, this is one of those times.

“I don’t understand what Kevin’s so upset about,” Joe is saying, head lolling against the duvet. “I just asked the kids if they had cookies, since they’re kids, and kids always have cookies. It was just a question, Nicky. Kevin’s such a fail sometimes. Hey, do _you_ have any cookies?”

"You're only supposed to take two of these," Nick says dubiously, examining the label on the prescription bottle. "And then try to avoid, like, operating heavy machinery."

"I just want Oreos, man. Cookies aren't heavy machinery." Joe is sprawled across the bed now, arms held straight out in a futile effort to avoid wrinkling his tuxedo. "And I don't want to operate them. I want to eat them. Because, you know, nom nom nom.”

Nick lets his hand drop to his side. "You didn't take two of these, did you."

Joe shakes his head, then nods, then shakes his head again. "Well, no and yes and no. I took two, but they weren't working. So I took two more. And then I took two again. So I took them _in_ twos. Does that count?"

Nick retrieves a nine-dollar bottle of Evian from the mini-fridge, thrusts it in Joe’s general direction, and calls Louise for emergency assistance. By the time she shows up in full makeup, curlers, and sweatpants, Joe has dragged Nick down onto the bed with him and is waxing philosophical about the inherent superiority of Oreos to Chips Ahoy.

“Pump him full of water,” she advises sharply. “The only way you’re getting this out of his system – if you can get it out at all – is by flushing it. Or you’ll just make him pee a lot. Either way, it won’t kill him to hydrate more. You guys really can’t live on diet soda and – ”

“Save the lecture for a less critical time,” Nick groans. Joe is tucked up against his side, pressing his face into Nick’s curls and running his hands along the lapels of Nick’s tuxedo jacket. Any other time, Nick would be popping wood and cursing his lack of self control, but they’re going to be at an awards show in less than two hours and Joe won’t shut up about how a _real_ cookie has inherent moistness and Chips Ahoy are drier than the Sahara.

He stumbles over a few syllables and his lips buzz the soft spot just behind Nick’s ear, and okay, so maybe his dick’s a _little_ interested.

Louise shrugs. “There’s really nothing we can do beyond that. Just get his shoes on, be in the limo in an hour, and try to stay away from Seacrest.”

“I didn’t even want to ask her for cookies,” Joe says after Louise has stomped out. “She wouldn’t give me any even if she had a whole Girl Scout troop hiding in her purse.”

Nick blows a curl off his forehead and wonders how the hell he’s going to keep Joe away from the cameras when they’re going to the Emmys and he’s goddamn _nominated_ for one.

*

The red carpet is thankfully crowded with a group of half-naked teenagers from FOX’s latest primetime soap, but Joe still manages to find his way in front of Giuliana Rancic’s microphone. Nick trails behind helplessly, hoping against hope that an earthquake will hit at that precise moment and swallow them all.

No such luck.

“You’re looking so strong these days, Joe!” Giuliana shriek-laughs, and Joe just smiles dopily. “What’s your secret? What are you eating?”

“Lots of cookies,” Joe says, and Nick thinks they just might be safe until he adds, “Because you’ve got to get your cookies, you know? I mean, why do people say ‘toss your cookies’ when you’re talking about puking? Because, man, I just don’t get it. Cookies aren’t something to joke about. Like, take a stale one, for example. If you toss that at someone, it could really hurt, and I bet you’d end up in a lawsuit. I’ve never been sued, you know, but – ”

"You're high," Nick hisses, despite the lack of sibilants. "Please stop talking."

“Sorry,” Joe says, grinning toothily at Giuliana. “My brother says I sound like I’m high. I’m not, though, promise.”

“ _THIRD SHIFT WITH JOE JONAS_ AIRS WEEKNIGHTS AT TWELVE-THIRTY ON FOX,” Nick yelps, steering his brother away from the gossip reporters and towards the entrance to the Kodak Theater.

Joe is still boneless when they reach their assigned seats, where the writing team is clustered together in rented tuxedos and Jessica McClintock prom dresses. Louise is sitting in the row directly ahead of them, thumbing her Blackberry with one hand and reapplying her mascara with the other. She's changed out of her sweatpants and into something black and elaborately feathered.

"You look like a giant goth eagle," Joe says, dropping into the chair next to her.

"It's Jean-Paul fucking Gaultier, you uncultured jackass," Louise says without looking up. "Is he still high?"

"Extremely," Nick replies, sitting down on Joe's other side and signaling a passing usher for a bottle of water. “How did it get covered?”

Louise shrugs, displacing Joe’s head from where it landed on her shoulder. “Not that bad, honestly. Giuliana doesn’t care much about anyone who’s not an underweight twentysomething female, so she just moved on to the people from _Costa del Sol_. Your mother’s probably called you about three times in the last ten minutes, but other than that, I think he’s okay.”

Nick checks his phone. “Four times, actually. I hope no one we know bothered to TiVo this.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Nicky. I Tweeted about it,” Joe says gleefully. “I told them when we were getting out of the car and everything. And asked if anyone knows where I can get some Oreos in this place. So far, I’ve got a lot of convenience store recommendations and a whole lot of people who keep asking if they can blow me, but other than that, zilch.”

Nick drops his head into his hands and prays, once again, for an earthquake.

*

Ninety minutes into the show, and Joe’s getting antsy.

“Are we next yet?” he asks Nick, who was the only one with enough foresight to grab a ceremonies listing at the door.

“No – “ Nick starts, but Louise – who’s leaning over the program and examining it closely – clears her throat next to him and his stomach seizes. “Um, yes, actually.”

“Oh. Good,” Joe says, and he sits back in his seat with the drug-loose confidence of someone who knows he can’t possibly win.

Nick’s heart actually _hurts_ for him, because Tina Fey and Steve Carrell are on-stage now, announcing the name of the category and the history of variety programs, and Joe will stay in his seat the whole time. The camera will cut to him, and he’ll be applauding politely for Conan or Jon Stewart, and later on – after the Xanax has worn off, after Joe is normal again – they’ll smile for the cameras at the afterparties and talk about how nice it was just to be nominated. Joe will mean it, but Nick won’t, and – ”

“The winner is,” Tina’s saying on stage, and she opens the envelope. She looks down and smiles, and her gaze flicks over to their section.

_No fucking way._

He hears Louise suck in a sharp breath, hears Joe’s seat squeak as he shoots straight up.

Tina grins, and there’s no mistaking that. “The winner is _Third Shift With Joe Jonas.”_

"Jesus Christ," says Nick.

"Oh my God," says Joe.

"Holy motherfucking _shit,"_ says Louise.

“Don’t swear like that!” Nick squawks. “You’re on camera.”

“Who fucking _cares?”_ Louise yells over the din, jumping out of her seat and nearly ripping Nick’s arm out of his socket in the process. The writers and producers are jubilant behind them, sounds of rustling taffeta and flasks being unholstered weirdly audible through everything. “Get him up, for God’s sake!”

Joe is still stuck in his seat, spine ramrod-straight and mouth open, and Nick realizes that his brother literally cannot _believe_ that it’s _his_ show that just won an Emmy. Joe’s brain can’t process this fact; he’s a broken record right now, humming along just fine until you get to the scratch and then – nothing. Joe will sit there forever if he’s allowed to do it, unable to comprehend what’s happening around him.

Nick leans down, wraps his arms around his brother, and hauls him up the aisle, followed by a crowd of family and friends that could rival any of their tours. He prods Joe until he shakes hands with Steve and hugs Tina, then positions him at the podium and steps back.

This is Joe’s moment to shine, and Nick can’t think of anywhere else he could possibly be than just off to the side, just within reach.

“I have no idea what to say,” Joe stutters into the microphone, cheeks flushed red with adrenaline and benzodiazepines. “I seriously, seriously, oh my _God_ , seriously, wasn’t expecting this. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

He turns to Nick, eyes huge and helpless, and _Jesus Christ._ Joe was so convinced that he’d never win that he hadn’t even prepared a goddamn speech.

Louise reaches into the neckline of her dress, rummages around, and comes up with a folded piece of paper. She hands it over to Joe, smoothing it out and tapping the first scrawled line with her finger.

“Okay, I lied,” Joe manages, adjusting his glasses with his free hand. “Apparently, I have quite a bit to say. And it came out of my assistant’s boobs.”

Nick is fairly certain that somewhere in the audience, a FOX executive – or ten – is having a silent coronary.

Joe coughs. “So, um, I guess I have a lot of people to thank. That’s what you do up here, right? Oh, God, someone help me. Um...

“Conan O’Brien, first. Man, you’re my mentor, and none of this would be happening without you, and maybe my Emmy can hang out with your Emmys and we can get some G.I. Joes and it’ll be a rockingly awesome battle royale in the hallway.

“Of course, my amazingly talented writing staff – Judah Friedlander, Paul Scheer, Bianca Sanderson, Mark Horvath, Rebekah Morgan, Rachel Birmingham, Birdie Dean, Victor Freel, Rob Huebel – anything funny I say started off in one of their brains first, because they’re geniuses with postgraduate degrees and I barely made it out of fake Disney high school. Seriously, I only have a show because of my hair.

“Ah, my co-producer, Susan Black, who takes care of everything I don’t have the attention span to consider – for reals, we wouldn’t even have a coffee dispenser if it weren’t for her.

“All of our fans, you guys, seriously. You stay up until way past a time when all normal people are in bed and talk about what we did the next day, and you’re why we do this. You’re why we wear stupid costumes and why I’ve made myself all _persona non grata_ with the Rockefeller Center security team, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Our executive assistant, Louise O’Donnell, who’s probably hiding a complete set of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ down the front of her dress and who once tried to throw me out of a moving car because I wouldn’t eat my yogurt like a good boy; Louise, you’re the scariest person in the world. Even Ice-T says so.”

Nick spies Louise biting back tears through three sets of false eyelashes and makes a mental note to taunt her about it later.

“Um, oh my God,” Joe is saying. “Mom and Dad, of course. My little brother Frankie, who tells everyone he’s interning on the show but who’s really just trying to mack on the costume girls. My awesome brother Kevin and his wife, Danielle, and their kids – once they learn to play instruments, man, those little dudes are going to scare people with how talented they are. Kev and Dani watch the show every night, they tell me, but I think they’re just up with one sick kid or another and they like to turn on the TV and swear at me for not being covered in baby puke, like they are. Definitely God, for making this all possible in the first place, because we wouldn’t have this show if we didn’t have, like, an Earth and antennas and stuff.”

He stops, looks down at the statue, and turns to Nick.

“And my brother, Nick. He leads the band, and I wanted to call them ‘Nick Jonas and the Purity Rings’ and give them halos and white virgin robes, but Nick’s all, like, a legitimate musician, so they’re Nick Jonas and the Cabinet.” Joe smiles, wide and genuine, and Nick’s throat grows tight. “I know it’s really rare to find that one person in the whole wide world who just _gets_ you and understands who you are without even trying, and I know it feels better than anything when you find it. I also know I’m the luckiest guy ever, because I’ve had that feeling with me every single day of my life since I was three years old.

“Nick’s... Nick’s my everything, on-stage and off. I love you so much, man.”

Then Nick has an armful of Joe, who’s clutching him so tightly that he can feel the air being pushed out of his lungs, feel his ribcage constricting with every breath he tries to take.

The orchestra is playing something innocuous and someone is ushering them offstage; Nick feels the cold glint of Emmy metal against the back of his neck, and he’s squeezing back, knocking into production assistants as Louise yanks her Blackberry out of the depths of her neckline and starts yelling at someone.

“I love you I love you I love you,” Joe is mouthing wetly, lips set in frantic motion against Nick’s throat as they collapse against the nearest backstage wall. The Emmy production team is ushering the next presenters into place while someone sets up a clip reel in the background, but no one spares them a second glance. Nick guesses they’re used to this by now.

“Love you too,” he whispers back, clenching his hands in the smooth fabric of Joe’s tuxedo. The guy just won an Emmy – he can afford a few wrinkles. “Love you forever, oh my God. Oh my God. Joe, _you won.”_

Joe pulls back incrementally. “We did. Jesus. What did I even _say_ out there?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still high.”

“Kinda.” Joe wrinkles his nose. “Louise gave me a list of names, thank God.” He holds the statuette between them, gold glittering reflective green under the backstage lighting. “It’s sort of heavy, actually. Going to be a pain to tote this around all night.”

"Give it to me for a second," Nick says dazedly. "I don't want you leaving this in the bathroom."

"It's an Emmy, dude," Joe replies, knuckles gone white around the base of the statuette. His eyes are still shot wide from the sedatives, oil-black pupils distended and huge. "You don't forget these in bathrooms. You forget these in the champagne room, next to the hooker you've hired to do blow off her stomach. At least, I think that's what you're supposed to do when you get one."

"You don't even know what blow is."

"Yeah, well, neither do you," Joe retorts, steering them into an empty room.

Nick huffs. Joe has a point.

This theatre was essentially designed for awards shows, so Nick’s not really all that surprised to learn that there’s a wide array of rooms just off the stage for winners and losers to have their breakdowns in as much privacy as Hollywood can ever afford. He collapses on a nearby couch as Joe kicks the door closed, muffling the noise of the orchestra and the crowd just outside.

“It doesn’t feel real,” he says, and Nick knows what he means. He shoves over on the couch to make room for Joe, who sets the Emmy statuette on the table in front of them and sighs before draping himself over Nick.

“It’ll sink in soon enough,” Nick says, sliding his arms around Joe’s neck and holding him at arm’s length. “Feel like an Emmy winner yet? Because you still look like my older brother.”

“Not really,” Joe says, leaning forward and brushing his lips across Nick’s, quiet and understated like usual.

Then he wets his lips with his tongue and does it again, and when he draws away, Nick knows that this is it.

Here – in a dull, blank room backstage at the Kodak Theatre, when they’re three thousand miles away from home but with everyone they know and love within reach, minutes after Joe’s stood at a gilded podium and taken possession of the highest honor his profession can bestow upon him – this is where the last twenty-seven years of Nick’s life has been taking him.

This is the moment when their entire universe shifts beneath their feet.

“You did it,” Nick whispers, overwhelmed and overcome. He twists his fingers in the thick brown curls at the nape of Joe’s neck and presses their foreheads together, and for a split-second, they’re teenagers again – riding a wave they never expected into award shows and sold-out arenas, lost and unsteady amongst phenomenal success and hanging onto each other for dear life.

_“We_ did it,” Joe whispers back, and when he kisses Nick this time, it’s for real.

It’s slow, weirdly tentative after what Nick thinks of as three decades of foreplay. Joe’s lips are soft beneath his, and when Nick darts his tongue out to test his boundaries, he feels the tiny indentations where Joe’s been biting down on his bottom lip all night. He runs his thumbs across the warm skin on the back of Joe’s neck and cants their heads towards just the right angle, and _oh._

Joe tastes like nerves, Nick thinks, faint rasp of toothpaste on top of no dinner and too much medication. He presses his tongue experimentally against Joe’s, and the sharp intake of breath he elicits from his brother is something that will haunt his dirtiest fantasies until the end of his days.

Joe pulls back, eyes dark and glittering. “Not here,” he says, and Nick understands.

It can’t happen here. Los Angeles is a sprawling, static, one-industry kind of town where the sun never stops shining, and it’s not right. Los Angeles is who they were a lifetime ago, kids living as adults with photographers lurking around every corner; Nick never smiled when they lived here, and Joe wound up chafing so much that he fled to the other side of the country as soon as he could. If this happens in Los Angeles, they can forget about it as soon as the plan begins its ascent. Like everything else here, it won’t be real. Los Angeles is a dreamworld playground of golden statuettes and manicured gardens, and that’s not who they are anymore.

They live in New York, now, where they eat lunch alongside manic-depressive Wall Street floor traders and where their closest neighbor is Little Edie the Pigeon Lady. New York is dirty and crowded, sweaty one day and bone-frozen the next, and everyone there has a chip on their shoulder the size of Liberty Island. Joe swears all the time and drinks burnt black coffee from the Dominican lunch counter on the next block, while Nick purposely gets lost in the East Village every time he tries to find a new guitar shop. New York is where they both learned how to mix drinks and make poached eggs, where Joe learned to focus and where Nick learned to calm down. It’s where they learned to be adults, and Nick sees it when he looks in the mirror and notices the smile lines that were never there before.

No. If this is going to happen, it’s happening in New York.

“At home,” Nick breathes; Joe’s answering grin is like an electrical fire, white-hot and dangerous and sparking its way into Nick’s veins.


	4. Chapter 4

*

Kevin wakes Nick and Joe the next morning by unleashing his children upon them. Nick hears and feels everything rather than seeing it; he’s got his head buried in the pillow, and even the heavy thump of Mark landing on his back isn’t enough to rouse him.

“Mommy put Noah in his tuxedo again,” Caleb announces. “She says he looks too cute in it to be allowed.”

Mark begins drumming between Nick’s shoulder blades with his hands; the kid’s either going to be an awesome percussionist or a slightly off-kilter masseuse. Nick hasn’t decided which. “She tried to make us dress up again, too, but we ran away.”

“Daddy said he’d help us hide from her as long as we woke you guys up,” Jacob adds from where he’s bouncing up and down on the end of the bed.

“Daddy is an evil man with no sense of boundaries,” Nick says into the pillow. “You can tell him that Uncle Nick said that. And tell him I looked really mad about it.”

He hears Kevin cough, somewhere in the background. “Try harder next time, Nicholas.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mark says. “Daddy’s here, too.”

“Thanks, guys. You’re all champions,” Joe says, muffled vibrations passing through the feathers of their pillows to tickle Nick’s cheek. “You in particular, Kev. You’re a real peach.”

“Grownups are being boooo-ring,” Jacob hollers. “Hey, can we go to that place with the Lucky Charms pancakes for breakfast?”

“I’m never having children,” Joe groans next to Nick, kicking at him under the comforter. “If I ever start talking about wanting children, remind me of this day. And if that doesn’t work, remind me about the back surgery you’re eventually going to have to get if they keep sitting on you like that.”

Nick smiles, soft cotton brushing against his lips. “The kid gives a good massage, dude. Don’t knock it.”

“You’ve got about three more minutes before he starts whaling away on your lats,” Joe replies. “I’ve been down this path before. He may look sweet, but inside, he’s a baby John Bonham with better genetic material.”

Nick feels the weight on his back vanish at the same time as the mattress dips; Kevin’s picked up Mark and placed him on his own lap. “Stop squirming, young man, or else it’s back to Mom and her tuxedos,” he admonishes his son. “That goes for everyone.”

The bed stills as Jacob and Caleb stop jumping and sit down – judging by the sigh Nick hears, Jacob is doing so with great reluctance – and Nick forces himself to roll over, careful not to jostle Caleb’s tiny back where it’s resting against his own legs. Kevin is sitting next to him with Mark standing on his thighs, making faces at his older brothers. Jacob has plopped down on Joe’s far side, and Nick tries hard not to snicker when he notices the smudge of lipstick where Amy Poehler had kissed him on the cheek last night, telling him he was a little gentleman.

Joe is laid out next to him, tanned and easy beneath his grey t-shirt, squinting without his glasses. He’d tossed them off as soon as they’d gotten into their room last night, hours of afterparties and champagne taking their toll, and he’d lazily let Nick wrangle him into sleep pants and a t-shirt before collapsing into bed sometime around three. Nick had tried to keep his hands neutral and calm, tried to keep himself from scratching his fingernails along the hard, tanned planes of Joe’s exposed stomach, tried to keep his hands from slipping beneath the waistband of Joe’s black boxer-briefs. When Joe snuggled into his side and fell asleep on Nick’s shoulder, Nick tried to think about anything but the heat of Joe’s breath ghosting along his exposed collarbones.

He’d succeeded, for the most part.

They’d stayed tangled around each other in that backstage room for a few more moments before Joe had popped up, dragging Nick along with him, and they’d kissed hard and fast before heading out to do interviews with what seemed like every news outlet on Earth and a few from Mars, for good measure. They made it back to their seats, drunk writers sprawled out in every direction and Louise holding Caleb securely in her lap.

“One of your brother’s gnomes escaped from its designated parental unit,” she’d said, looking down at Caleb with a mixture of annoyance and fascination. “They put it in a little suit, look. It even has a bowtie. It has _little Oxford shoes,_ Nick. Can I keep it?”

Caleb had tilted his head up and arranged his face into the strongest expression of distaste a seven-year-old could manage. “I’m not an _it._ My _name_ is _Caleb.”_

“On second thought.” Louise had wrinkled her nose and loosened her grip. “Can I trade this one in for one that doesn’t look quite so much like you? I’m creeped out now.”

Nick had held out his arms, and Caleb crawled over gratefully, settling himself between Joe and Nick and pawing at the Emmy statuette.

“It’s not wearing any pants,” he’d said after a moment’s consideration, and Joe had burst into a loud peal of giggles that could probably be heard on the broadcast feed.

Joe is exhausted, now, and Nick sees how badly he just wants to roll over and go back to sleep; he sees it in the heavy press of Joe’s shoulders against the bottom of his pillow, sees it in the lazy way he turns his head to look at Nick. He hasn’t demanded that anyone get him coffee, and he’s letting Jacob play with his spiky locks in a way that would ordinarily earn his nephew a lecture on the difference between healthily flouting the rules of traditional masculinity and actually braiding Uncle Joe’s hair. He’s sleeping off excitement and upheaval and a week’s dosage of pharmaceuticals, and Nick’s tempted to shoo everyone out and curl into his older brother until they drift off together.

But they’re still in LA, and LA isn’t home.

He wants to lean in and push the disheveled waves off Joe’s forehead, but he settles for poking him in the side. “Gotta get up, Joey,” he says quietly. “We go home tonight.”

Joe blinks, and Nick catches the spark there, hot promise of everything to come. “Yeah,” he replies. “We do.”

*

The flight is torture. The car ride home is even worse.

Joe stares at Nick without restraint or shame, his eyes huge and hungry as he laces their hands together in the backseat of the town car. They’ve both been hard since somewhere over the Central Time Zone, but at least Nick had the decency to try and hide himself with throw pillows and sweatshirts; Joe kicks his legs out casually and lets his dick nudge up against the denim of his jeans, distorting the clean line of his zipper for anyone to see.

Right now, “anyone” consists of Nick, who distracts himself by feeling around Joe’s carry-on to make sure the Emmy statuette is still in the inside compartment.

“You’ve checked on that thing, like, seventeen times,” Joe remarks as the car turns off Columbus Avenue and onto their street. “I promise, I didn’t throw it out the window when you weren’t looking.”

Nick rolls his eyes and concentrates on not letting his heart beat clean out of his chest.

Joe’s pretty sure that he lost his keys somewhere off La Brea, so when they arrive at their building and tip the driver entirely too generously, Nick digs through his satchel to find them and lets Joe carry their bags upstairs. Halfway through the process, he drops his forehead against the wall in front of him and sighs.

“I’m about to get fucked by my brother,” he says aloud, hoping their downstairs neighbors think he’s being overdramatic and metaphorical.

When he opens the door to their apartment, he notices that Joe has unceremoniously scattered their luggage throughout the foyer. He maneuvers his way around the suitcases and into the living room, where Joe is fiddling with the stereo system.  
Nick thinks he might actually murder his brother if he starts playing Marvin Gaye, but he hears the easy, smooth guitar licks of Kings of Leon and relaxes.

Incrementally.

Joe is poking at the complicated electronics like they might explode if he doesn’t tap out the right sequence, James Bond in a Midtown condominium, and it’s clear that neither of them have any idea what to do.

Neither of them ever actually expected this to be a reality, and Nick feels a pang when he remembers that nothing will ever be the same.

“We should really unpack before we do anything,” he says uncertainly, trying to block out the tiny, dark part of himself that’s chanting about how he’s going to fuck this up and how he’ll have to move in with Kevin and Danielle out of shame.

Joe stops his frantic motions and turns around. He’s taken his glasses off already, and his eyes look over-bright and wide. “You want to unpack.”

“Well, I just mean that if we don’t do it now, it’s just going to sit there and – ”

Joe crosses the room like he crosses the stage every night, owning the floor and everyone watching him. He looks agitated, but not overly so; he looks like does when he’s two seconds away from finishing an interview, just one question standing between him and a commercial break. “Nick, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else before, okay?”

“Um, okay.”

Joe tilts Nick’s chin up, side of his hand hot against Nick’s flesh, and his eyes are sharp and focused on Nick’s.

“When you were fifteen years old, you had this stupid red tank top that I’m pretty sure you stole from me, actually, and you wore it all the time. You wore it on stage, dude, and you got all sweaty and sunburned when we played outside, and you were just starting to get up early in the morning and work out with me, yeah? You remember that?”

Nick nods. It’s a vague memory, getting up at the crack of dawn and watching Joe slide his hair back in a headband before teaching Nick everything he ever needed to know about bench-presses.

“Good. So you were getting these little muscles, and you were kind of into it, man – everyone noticed – and you never, ever wore sleeves if you could help it. So you walked around in this stupid red tank top with these crazy biceps that didn’t belong on a kid your age, and one day, I just gave up and went into the bathroom on that stupid recording bus and jerked off harder than I’d ever jerked off in my entire life.

“I was eighteen years old then, Nick. I’m thirty now. This means that I’ve spent the last twelve years of my life thinking about you when I jerk off. When I fuck girls, when I fuck guys, _all the fucking time._ So, no,” Joe says evenly, pushing Nick down on the couch and straddling his hips. “We’re not fucking _unpacking.”_

Nick doesn’t even have time to process any of that before Joe’s mouth is on his, hot and demanding.

He’s been dreaming about this for months, thick roll of Joe’s tongue against his and their thighs slotting together, but dreams are a thin imitation of reality and Joe is heavy on his lap. Nick digs his fingertips into the notches of Joe’s hips, pulling them flush as Joe angles Nick’s chin wherever he damn well pleases and breathes dark and promising against Nick’s lips.

“I’m gonna have bruises tomorrow,” Nick mumbles as Joe grips his jaw and presses thumbprint whorls into Nick’s pale skin.

Joe bites at Nick’s lower lip, suckling and pulling until it feels swollen and pouty. “Good,” he replies, whisper turning into a growl as he yanks Nick forward.

It’s savage, Nick manages to think with the few remaining brain cells still functioning. Joe is so easy and casual and soft, big smile and round glasses and caramel skin, and Nick was expecting – he was expecting soft pecks and warm hands and laughter, both of them half-shy and half-nervous as they slipped out of their clothes and touched skin they’d never touched before.

He’d expected the _opposite_ of this, but then Joe wrenches a hand in his hair and Nick’s brain nearly shorts out and never once in his life did he imagine that Joe Jonas was capable of kissing someone like he would die if he stopped.

Then again, he’d never once imagined that Joe Jonas would have been in love with his little brother for the last decade, either.

He lets Joe press him down into the cushions of the overstuffed couch, lets him drag his mouth down Nick’s neck and bite at the tendons there, hard nips of ownership against his throat. Joe is hard enough to pound nails, snugged up against Nick’s thigh, and Nick’s own cock is nudging at the hard plane of Joe’s stomach between their t-shirts. Joe is muttering nonsense as he works his way down to Nick’s collarbones, _hot_ and _god_ and _nicky_ like benedictions into his little brother’s flesh, and Nick groans as Joe mouths wetly at his Adam’s apple.

“You’re going to kill me,” he manages hoarsely, letting Joe slide his hands beneath Nick’s shirt and strip it off. “Honest to God, I’m going to die right here.”

Joe shakes his head, shucking his own shirt and tossing both somewhere across the room. “Not until I suck your dick,” he says matter-of-factly, dropping back down and pressing his mouth to the skin over Nick’s ribs.

“Oh, _Christ,”_ Nick stutters.

Joe moves like a storm front over Nick’s body, black hair and earth-tan flesh swiftly passing over Nick’s midsection until he feels Joe’s fingers pulling at the fly of his jeans. He lifts his hips when Joe tugs at the waistband of his boxers, lets Joe tug his pants and his underwear down past his dick in one fluid motion. Joe’s done this a lot more than Nick has, he knows; Joe has lovers while Nick rarely breaks up the monotony of jerking off solo. Joe knows how to please others, women and men and _everyone,_ and when he drags his tongue across the slick head of Nick’s cock, Nick knows he’s about to get his brains blown out.

“Ohmygod,” he says as Joe ducks his head down and envelops Nick’s entire dick with one swallow.

He doesn’t last long. Joe works Nick’s cock like he was born for this, throat opening and fluttering around Nick like nothing he’s ever felt before, spit-slick lips sliding along Nick’s shaft like fingers across guitar frets. Nick struggles to keep his hips low, tries desperately to stay still instead of pumping into Joe’s mouth and fucking his brother right down his throat. Joe’s tongue draws a hot, wet path along the underside of Nick’s cock and Nick keens, high and uncontrolled.

He loves Joe. He’s in love with Joe. He’s been fantasizing about Joe for months now, hand on his cock and mind on his brother, but it’s not until this moment that Nick realizes that he could die happy right now, flat on his back on a Pottery Barn couch in his living room in New York while Joe sucks him down and looks up at him through dark, splayed lashes.

He lets his eyes drift past Joe’s face – eyes narrowed in concentration as he hollows his cheeks – and looks into what passes for middle distance, here. Joe’s jeans are riding low on his hips, tugged down where he slid along the microfiber couch, and – _oh._

Joe is rolling his hips into the couch, matching the pace he’s setting with his mouth, and if Nick weren’t whiting out and three seconds from coming, he’d help Joe out with that. He thinks about stilling Joe’s motions with his hands, twisting his brother around until his mouth is settled firmly alongside Joe’s cock, suckling the head as Joe relaxes his throat for another thrust, cupping Joe’s balls as he –

“IloveyouohmygodJoeIloveyou,” he breathes as he comes, explosions sparking behind his eyelids and Joe staring up at him, eyes almost patient as he swallows Nick’s load with panache.

Joe pulls off Nick’s softening dick with a _pop_ and slides back up his body, and Nick knows that he’ll never do this with anyone else for the rest of his life.

“We should have done this years ago,” Joe says breathlessly, tucking his face into the curve of Nick’s neck and grasping his own cock. He jerks himself quickly and efficiently, Nick too fucked-out and blissed to do anything much more beyond rocking their hips together, and he feels Joe bite down on on the meat of his shoulder when he comes, hard, spilling over his fingers and bleeding onto the soft skin of Nick’s torso.

Nick turns his head, eyes drifting closed as he does so. “Duh,” he replies, relaxing into the open circle of Joe’s arms as his brother laughs, throaty and gorgeous and loved.

They fall asleep like that, sticky and squished and utterly satisfied in the living room of the apartment they’ve shared for ages, Joe resting against Nick’s shoulder and Nick’s face buried in Joe’s hair.

*

“Twelve years?” Nick says the next evening, resting his guitar alongside his podium and leaning over to straighten Joe’s tie. They’ve got Gabby Sidibe and Will Forte on the show tonight, so Joe’s hopped up on sugar and ever-present anticipation of good, quality banter.

Joe makes a face, but he lets Nick tuck the ends of the tartan underneath the first button of his suit jacket. “When you say it like that, it sounds terrible. I had plenty of sex during those twelve years, I’d like to remind you.”

Nick smiles and pats Joe’s lapels. He’s always been able to touch, but it’s different today; Joe’s hand lingering on Nick’s hip, Nick’s legs tangled up with Joe’s as they dig into the takeout ziti Louise grudgingly picked up for them on her way back from a meeting at NBC. They’d made out on the couch in Joe’s office earlier, trading leisurely kisses and rubbing off against each others’ hips until their producer knocked on the door and hauled them out for rehearsal.

Joe’s been grinning like an idiot all day, and while everyone else thinks it’s because of the little gold statue he’d placed in the middle of the writers’ table, Nick knows better. Nick knows a lot of things, now; he knows that Joe likes to take charge, knows that Joe likes kissing hard and deep. He knows what Joe looks like when he comes, now, eyes screwed shut and mouth open on a moan as Nick works two fingers inside him.

Nick knows that he loves Joe, and he knows that Joe loves him back.

“I mean, a _lot_ of sex,” Joe is saying, sly grin playing around the corners of his mouth, and it’s only the 10-second announcement that keeps Nick from leaning over and brushing a kiss across his brother’s cheek.

“You have a monologue to do,” Nick says, smiling and strapping on his guitar. “So get out there and try not to convince the Academy that they made a mistake, okay?”

“Always the cautious one, Nicky,” Joe says, bumping their foreheads together and reaching center stage just before their announcer makes his nightly introduction.

Ten years ago, Nick never would have expected this. He never would have expected to be playing off to the side, covering ten-second snippets of songs for people who inexplicably want to talk to Joe. He never would have expected to be where he is right now, tangled up in Joe forever and never dreaming of getting out, but that’s where he is. That’s where they are, and that’s where they’ll stay.

Dreams may change, Nick thinks, but his love for Joe will remain regardless of what they face.

The audience’s applause is dying down, now, and Joe is tapping his fingers against his thigh like he always does when he’s preparing to begin the night’s introduction. Nick smiles, because Joe was born to do this, and he was born to stand right alongside him.

His brother waves to his fans, vague thank-yous and smiles at corners of the theatre, and Nick notices his deep intake of breath before he begins speaking.

“So a lot of things happened this weekend,” Joe says, finally, flicking his gaze towards the camera before turning to Nick.

His eyes are full of affection and promise, golden and lovely from underneath the spotlight, and it’s the most beautiful thing Nick’s ever seen.

*

END


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